The transmission of science and philosophy

CHARLES BURNETT

This chapter concentrates on the theoretical sciences: man's reasoning con­cerning the world that he lives in; about the visible and the invisible; about causes and beginnings; sciences that can be pursued without any practical aim in mind beyond the elevation of the human spirit, though there can be practical applications.

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes - I mean the universe - but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.^[385]

Diffusion from one source or independent discoveries

If one is considering the spread of such science on a global level, a basic question is whether there is diffusion from one centre, or traditions deriving from different sources. Some scholars, like Joseph Needham and Nayef al- Rodhan, would see the spread in terms of streams of scientific invention flowing together into the common pool of modern science.

It is our view that the musics of Asia and Europe constitute a single, historical continuum; the processes of development and evolution observ­able in one region are relevant elsewhere; that musical evolution in Europe is not to be understood in isolation from that of Asia, any more than evolution in East Asia is to be understood in isolation from processes in Central or Western Asia, in the Ancient Middle East, and more recently in Europe; that throughout Eurasia, the social context of music, indeed, the sociology of music, can only be adequately explored on a supranational basis.^[387]

Other scholars would see different civilizations having their distinctive sci­ences - or scientific point of view - one of which is not necessarily ‘better' or more correct than another; of which Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an example.^[388]

Sometimes the similarity of an idea or technique can be explained by historical evidence of transmission, at other times that similarity is used as an indication that there must have been such contacts, even if they are now difficult to trace. Migrations, trade and travel over the land mass of Eurasia can account for the spread of ideas and techniques between the most northern and western lands of Europe to the most eastern and southern lands of Asia, and to the offshore islands of the British Isles and Iceland at one end, to those of Japan and the Spice Islands at the other. The continent of Africa, whose Mediterranean shores bound it to Europe, and whose eastern seaboard opened it up to West Asian, Indian and Far Eastern contacts, can also be brought into the global network.

In Central America, therefore, we find peoples who had discovered, independently of their contemporaries in the eastern hemisphere, mathemat­ical principles in the ordering of the universe, and the Maya invention of a sophisticated kind of writing (hieroglyphs denoting syllables) and of numer­ical symbols.^[390] But their separation from Eurasia also allowed their concep­tion of the universe to develop along different lines. The Aztec, Maya and others built up the idea of a layered universe rather than a universe consist­ing of concentric circles, and gave prominence to the planet Venus (whose period of 260 days approximated to the human period of gestation).^[391]

Historically within Eurasia one tradition of thought has regarded all knowledge as originating in the East and flowing West. This is a leitmotif in both Islamic culture and European science, and is also expressed in a previous ‘History of the World' - that of Sir Walter Raleigh (1614):

And if we look so far as the Sun-rising, and hear Paulus Venetus [1368-1428] what he reporteth of the uttermost Angle and Island thereof, wee shall finde that those Nations have sent out, and not received, lent knowledge and not borrowed it from the West. For the farther East (to this day) the more civill, the farther West the more savage.^[392]

This has been given flesh in modern times, in which there is a move to provide a counterbalance to the spread of structures of state and society through the European colonialism of the nineteenth century and the Ameri­can dominance in the twentieth, and the subsequent Eurocentric view of the universe. Thus publications have appeared such as Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, Roshdi Rashed and Regis Morelon's Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science and Helaine Selin's Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures.

Legends about the diffusion of science

Within the historical period we are concerned with, there were several accounts about how one's own nation or people acquired scientific know­ledge, often motivated by national pride or political reasons, but usually rooted in some historical basis. The Chinese had no doubt that all their sciences had been invented by the Yellow Emperor in the mists of time past. Schafer and Popplow, in this volume, draw attention to Lu Bi's seventeenth­century explanation of the south-pointing chariot as the rhetorical rediscovery of ancient wisdom.11 For the Greeks, and many medieval traditions deriving from them, Hermes is the originator of the sciences. Invention myths were gathered together in Isidore of Seville's aptly named Etymologiae (the ‘true accounts of derivations of words'). A genealogy is common to prefaces to many of the arts and sciences. In Islam we find the ‘chain of tradition' (isnad) which bestowed authority, usually applied to the sayings of the Prophet, transferred to science: such as the chronological parade of authorities in the preface to ‘Ali ibn al-‘Abbas al-Majusi's Kitab al-malaki,1^[396] and the derivation of Arabic geomancy through a series of Berber authorities.^[397] This carries over into Latin texts. Petrus Alfonsi, an AndalusianJew who converted to Chris­tianity in the early twelfth century, claimed that his astronomical tables were ‘taken from' those of the Arabs, Persians and Egyptians.^[398] The authority of the science derived from the authority of the nations from which it originated.

Prominently displayed in the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim (written in the late tenth century) is a text by the Persian Abu Sahl al-Fadl ibn Nawbakht (c. 800 ce), deriving the sciences from Alexander the Great and through Iran, which may be summarized as follows:

The many varieties of science descended from Babylon to Egypt and India. A knowledge of astronomy and astrology is especially associated with Jam, the son of Awanjhan. Afterwards there ruled Dahhak ibn Qay in the period of Jupiter and he built a city named after that planet. In this city he constructed twelve palaces named after the twelve signs of the zodiac, and installed in each a library and a group of scholars. Eventually, the greatest of these scientists - Hermes - abandoned the city and went to Egypt, where he became king; he brought with him much learning, though most of the wisdom remained behind. When Alexander invaded Persia, he raised al- Mada'in and destroyed the stones and pieces of wood bearing inscriptions. However, he had the Persian manuscripts in the Treasure Houses and Archives of Persepolis, including one on astronomy, medicine, and physics entitled al-Kashtaj, translated into Greek and Coptic before being burned; the translations were sent to Egypt. But, on the advice of their prophets, Zaradusht and Jamasb, earlier Persian kings had concealed copies of those books on the confines of India and China, where they escaped the ravages of Alexander. Iraq, then, was without learning until the reign of Ardashir ibn Babak, who sent to India, China and Rum [Byzantium] for copies of the lost books and had them translated back into Persian; Ardashir's son Sabur continued this task.

As an Iranian himself, Ibn Nawbakht was likely to support an Iranian tradition for the transmission of science. This includes some grains of truth, in that, thanks to Alexander the Great's conquests, Greek science did form part of the learning of the Seleucid Empire, and that there was a revival of learning under Khosro I Anushirwan.¹⁷ Moreover, there were Persian scholars in Egypt, such as Ostanes.

AJew, however, would claim that the Jews were the proprietors of wisdom. For example, Berakhya ha-Naqdan, the late twelfth-century Norman Jew who translated Adelard of Bath's Questions on Natural Science from Latin into Hebrew, wrote in his preface: ‘I was worried about translating these subjects, since I found them in non-Jewish writings. But they were originally translated from Hebrew... and I wished to cleanse the subjects from the defilement of the Gentile and restore them to the Holy Language'.¹⁸ Similarly, many Chinese scholars over the centuries argued that Buddhism, and, later, the Western ideas brought to China by the Jesuits, had originally been Chinese.¹⁹

Even the most banal text could be elevated in importance by claims of a venerable tradition. A text on prediction by thunder, of early medieval Irish origin, prefixes each prediction with a reference to sage authorities, described in an imaginative variety of ways: ‘philosophers who, by physical speculation with an almost prophetic enunciation according to the flourishing knowledge of excessive sagacity, declare what indications of things signify in a mystical way, predict'; ‘authors of outstanding intelligence, who have described by speculation throughout the night the prefigurations of all things, and all the mystical things, according to the capacity of human intelligence'.²⁰

Hubs of scientific knowledge

But legends of the transmission of science also reflect reality. When we survey the Middle Millennium, certain courts or cities stand out as hubs of learning and intellectual exchanges:

Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 41-62.

17 See p. 345 below.

18 Hermann Gollancz, Dodi ve-Nechdi (Unde and Nephew) of Berachya Hanakdan (London: Humphrey Milford and Oxford University Press, 1920), iv.

19 See the broad chronological survey of Michael Lackner, ‘Ex Oriente Scientia? Recon­sidering the Ideology of a Chinese Origin of Western Knowledge', Asia Major, 3rd series, 21 (2008): 183-200.

20 These are phrases from a text edited by David Juste and Hilbert Chiu, ‘The De tonitruis Attributed to Bede: An Early Medieval Treatise on Divination by Thunder Translated from Irish', Traditio 68 (2013): 97-124. Here p. 115.

1. At the beginning of the sixth century Alexandria still retained much of the glory of its past, as a centre of intellectual activity, drawing together the philosophy and theology of Jews, Christians, Gnostics, followers of Hermes Trismegistus, Buddhists and Zoroastrians. The leading intellec­tual figure of the time was John Philoponus (490-570), who commented on the works of Aristotle as a Christian, and was, in turn, espoused by Arabic philosophers after Alexandria fell into the hands of the Arabs in the 640s.

2. The court of Khosro I Anushirwan, the Sasanian emperor (r. 531-79). When Justinian closed the Athenian Academy in 529, the Greek philoso­phers who taught there were welcomed by Khosro. Among these philosophers were Priscianus Lydus (who wrote a set of questions on natural science for Khosro: Solutiones ad Chosroem), and Simplicius and Damascius, both commentators on Aristotle. Translations were made into Pahlavi both from Greek and from Sanskrit. The translation of the Indian tales of Panchatantra, which was subsequently translated into Arabic and thence into most of the languages of the Mediterranean region,^[401] was made by a doctor in Khosro's court, Burzoy, while to another court official, Buzurjmihr, several works on astrology were attributed.^[402]

3. The emperors of the Tang dynasty. This dynasty came into being in 618 ce and achieved its first glorious period just at the time when Muham­mad was establishing Islam. Its capital, Chang'an, was the most populous city in the world, and marked the eastern end and destination of the Silk Road, a large part of which the Tang controlled (the ‘first period' of the Silk Road). Thus Chang'an benefited from the arrival of people of different races with a wealth of ideas. Persian astronomers and musicians arrived at the court, and the Indian astronomers Qutan Luo and Gautama Siddhartha were directors of the astronomical bureau.^[403]

4. Tokharistan (Bactria) with its capital at Balkh. This was an important crossroads of culture. It is referred to in Arabic documents as the ‘Mother of Cities' - umm al-bilad. Its Nava Vihara (‘New College') - Nawbahar in Arabic - was directed by the ‘ Barmak', whose son, Khalid, took part in the ‘Abbasid revolution, which drew its strength from this region (Khor- asan, the larger area, including Tokharistan, by its Arabic designation). His grandson, Yahya ibn Barmak, was the tutor of Caliph Harun al- Rashid (786-809), and facilitated a major translation enterprise from Sanskrit to Arabic, including the Indian medical classics, of the Susruta, the Astangahrdaya samhita of Vagbhata and the Siddhasara of Ravigupta. If one follows Beckwith one would attribute to the influence of the Nawbahar the introduction of a distinct type of argumentation into the Arabic world.^[404] Balkh was also a goal for Chinese scholars seeking Bud­dhism (as is detailed elsewhere in this book), as is witnessed by the Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who travelled there in the mid-seventh century.

5. ‘Abbasid Baghdad in the ninth century. After the establishment of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate (749/50) and the foundation of its new capital at Baghdad (762) Arabic was made the official language for the whole Islamic realm, and a concerted attempt was made to translate the cultural heritage of those within the realm (Persian, Syriac and Greek) into the one Arabic language. Hence Arabic became the language of bureaucracy and of science from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.^[405] In the ninth century sponsored campaigns were made to translate Greek cor­pora in philosophy, mathematics and medicine into Arabic.

6. Mosul in the tenth century. Mosul was the bridgehead on the Tigris, on the opposite bank to ancient Nineveh, commanding the west-east route to Persia and India. It achieved its greatest importance under the Ham- danids, who effectively governed the central Islam realms from 890 to 1004. But in the early thirteenth century Kamal al-Din ibn Yunus (1156-1242) was teaching science and philosophy there, and expounding the Torah to Jews and the Gospels to Christians.

7. Cordova in the tenth century. When ‘Abd al-Rahman III, the ruler of Islamic Spain from 915-961, declared himself caliph (929), his kingdom rivalled that of Baghdad. The mixture of the population encouraged cultural exchange. Aside from pure Arabs - themselves divided into Yemenis and Mudaris (Syrians) - the population included Berbers, Spanish Christians, who adopted Arabic customs and language but remained Christians (Mozarabs), and Spaniards who converted to Islam (Muwalladun), Jews, black Africans and Slavs (saqalabun - slaves from northern Europe and Slavic lands). Cordova became the centre of a Talmudic school and Hebrew poetry flourished. The Bible was trans­lated into Arabic (the Psalter twice). Cordova had half a million inhabit­ants, seven hundred mosques, three hundred public baths. It was the most cultured city of Europe, boasting street lighting and sanitation.

7. Toledo in the twelfth century. While other places in Spain, as well as in Sicily, southern Italy and the Crusader States were centres for cultural exchange between Arabic and Latin (as well as Greek, in the case of Sicily and the Crusader States), Toledo from the mid-twelfth century until the mid-thirteenth century was undoubtedly the principal centre for Arabic-Latin translations. It is difficult to identify an official policy on the part of the Christian rulers, or the ecclesiastical authorities. Rather, the incentive appears to have come from scholars themselves, who were able to benefit from the presence of Arabic libraries and the linguistic help of Jewish scholars and Arabic-speaking local Christians (Mozarabs).

8. Constantinople in the mid- to late twelfth century, under Manuel I Comnenos (1118-80, r. 1143-80). Already the emperor's daughter Anna Comnena (1083-1153) had documented the intellectual standing of the city in the mid-twelfth century.^[406] In the discussions led by bishop Anselm of Havelberg and Metropolitan Niketas of Nikomedia in the Pisan quarter of Constantinople in 1136, James of Venice, Burgundio of Pisa and Moses of Bergamo were all present as interpreters, and in turn translated philosophical and theological texts from Greek into Latin. A copy of Ptolemy's Almagest was brought from Constantinople to Palermo by the ambassador and scholar Henricus Aristippus, and the Pisan brothers Hugo Eterianus (d. 1182) and his brother Leo Tuscus, the ‘famous interpreter of the unconquered prince' (invicti principis egregius interpres) ensured contacts between Constantinople and Tuscany.^[407]

9. Tabriz at the turn of the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. After the Mongols, through their conquests from China to the borders of Europe, established a Pax Mongolica and the Silk Road enjoyed a second period of activity, Tabriz became a cultural centre of great importance. Rashid al-Din (1247-1318), a vizier for the Ilkhanid Khan stated that

in these days, when, thank God, all corners of the earth are under our control and that of Chinggis Khan's illustrious family, and philosophers, astronomers, scholars, and historians of all religions and nations - Cathay [northern China], Machin [southern China], India, Kashmir, Tibet, Uyghur, and other nations of Turks, Arabs, and Franks - are gathered in droves at our glorious court, each and every one of them possessing copies of the histories, stories, and beliefs of their own people.^[408]

Among these scholars was a Chinese astronomer, Fu Mengchi, known as singsing (Taoist master), whom Hulegu, the Ilkhan, ordered to explain what he knew about the Chinese calendar and astrology to Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and, in turn, to learn astronomy from Nasir al-Din. In two days, Nasir al-Din acquired whatever he knew in this field and incorporated it into the Zij i-Ilkhani that he compiled.

10. Gao and Timbuktu in the late fifteenth century. Under its first emperor, Sonni Ali (r. 1468-92), Songhay became the largest kingdom that has ever existed in Africa. It owed its wealth to trade in gold, salt, ivory and slaves. Askia Muhammad the Great (1493-1529) transferred the capital to Tim­buktu, and promoted both Islam and scientific learning, encouraging scholars to come from Egypt and Morocco.

Methods of transmitting science

The spread of science was accomplished through books, artefacts and, above all, through the mobility of practitioners. The beginnings of Arabic astro­nomical theory resulted from an Indian embassy coming to the court of Caliph al-Mansur in Baghdad in 754-5, with a copy of the Sanskrit astronom­ical tables, which an Arabic court astrologer, al-Fazari, translated as the Zij al- Sindhind al-kabir - indicating by its title its origin in Sindh (present-day southern Pakistan) and Hind (India).^[409] In the case of the Western

The transmission of science and philosophy transmission, we have examples of books being among diplomatic exchanges, such as the copy of Dioscorides' De materia medica, the foundation of Western pharmacology, sent to the Muslim court in Cordova from Constantinople in the early ninth century,^[410] or the copy of Ptolemy's Alma­gest, the corresponding foundation of Western astronomy, brought again from Constantinople to Palermo by Henricus Aristippus, acting as ambas­sador for King William I of Sicily, shortly before 1160.^[411]

But scholars were needed to interpret the contents of books or the workings of scientific instruments. Nobody in Cordova could understand the Greek of Dioscorides, and so the caliph, ‘Abd al-Rahman III, asked the Byzantine emperor to send a Greek speaker, a monk called Nicolas, who collaborated with Andalusian scholars to produce a revision of Dioscorides' work which would provide a stimulus for subsequent pharmacological research in al-Andalus. The Irish computus tradition for calculating the Chris­tian calendar traces its origin to Mo-Sinnu moccu Min, abbot of Bangor, who in the late seventh century wrote down a computus that he had learnt orally from a certain Greek. Where this encounter took place is not clear, but at the time there is considerable evidence for exchange between Ireland and the eastern Mediterranean.^[412] Oral, too (apo phones) was the commentary on astronomical tables, by Shams al-Bukhari, put down in writing by Gregory Chioniades (d. 1302). Shams was orally translating from Arabic into Persian, and Chioniades was then writing down this translation in Greek. The importation of astronomy by the converted Jew, Petrus Alfonsi to Walcher, prior of Great Malvern, could only have been by word of mouth, if we believe his word that he had left his books on the other side of the English Channel.^[413]

But while Petrus Alfonsi had left his books behind, he did have his astrolabe with him. Already in the late tenth century, Gerbert of Aurillac was well known for using instruments and models in teaching a new curriculum in the seven liberal arts in the cathedral school of Rheims.³⁴ In twelfth-century England, the games of rhythmomachy and chess were used as recreational activities to help the learning of arithmetic and geometry respectively.³⁵

With the rise of universities in the West, teaching took the form of lecturing on a curriculum of set texts, and exploring the validity of arguments through dialectical reasoning which took a set format: the ‘Scholastic method'. Christopher Beckwith has argued that a scholastic method of teaching, developed in the viharas of Buddhist Central Asia, was carried over both into Tibetan Buddhist disputation, and also into the teaching method of the Islamic madrasas which originated in Central Asia, and often took over the buildings of the viharas.³⁶ From Islam it was able to spread to western Europe, through translations of Arabic works that exemplified the method, which coincided with the time of the establishment of European universities.³⁷

The establishment of curricula goes hand-in-hand with institutionalized teaching. In the European context, the choice of texts to translate from Arabic in the twelfth century was determined partly by the perceived need to fill in gaps in the curricula (at first, the seven liberal arts, and later, the Peripatetic curriculum of natural science, metaphysics and ethics), and partly

Lydia Wegener (eds.), Wissen uber Grenzen: Arabisches Wissen und Iateinisches Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 33 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2006): 89-105.

34 Richer, Histoire de France, ed. and trans. Robert Latouche (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1964), 2 vols.; Book iii, chapters 43-54, 50-65. Arianna Borrelli, in her Aspects of the Astrolabe: ‘architectonica ratio' in tenth- and eleventh-century Europe, Sudhoffs Archiv 57 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008), provides very convincing evidence for the early texts on the astrolabe to be notes on how the instrument-models were to be used.

35 Charles Burnett, ‘The Instruments which are the Proper Delights of the Quadrivium: Rhythmomachy and Chess in the Teaching of Arithmetic in Twelfth-Century Eng­land', Viator 28 (1997): 175-201. For the Persian text that was at the origin of European chess, and for its symbolism of the movement of the stars and of military tactics, see Antonio Panaino, La novella degli scacchi e della tavola reale: un antico fonte orientale sui due giochi da tavoliere piu diffusi nel mondo euroasiatico tra Tardoantico e Medioevo e sulla loro simbologia militare e astrale (Milan: Associazione Culturale Mimesis, 1999).

36 Beckwith, Warriors of the Cloisters.

37 That the modelling of the college system in European universities itself mirrors, and derived from, the Arabic waqf system is the argument of George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learningin Islam and the West (Edinburgh University Press, 1981). Both Makdisi's and Beckwith's theses are thought-provoking; they draw undeniable parallels between Western institutions and methods and those of the East, but they have not received universal acceptance.

by the texts available and studied in the source language.^[414] A translation of a text, however, does not ensure its reception,^[415] and even if information is transmitted, it may have no practical use, as pointed out by the tenth-century pharmacologist IbnJuljul, who wrote ‘an article on the drugs not mentioned in Dioscorides' book, but divided those that are used in medicine and are beneficial and those that are not used and were noted just for the sake of the record'.^[416] It is also valid to ask why certain knowledge was not transferred from one culture to another, such as the works of Plato which were passed over in favour of those of Aristotle, both in the transference of philosophy from the Late Antique to the Islamic world, and in the translations (of both Arabic and Greek philosophy) into Latin in the Middle Ages.^[417] Plato was regarded as more of a poet than a philosopher, and his dialectical way of arguing was not sufficiently systematic.

The politics of communicating science

If scientific knowledge has such a premium, one must be careful that it does not fall into the wrong hands. There is a statement by Ibn ‘Abdun, who presided over the market traders of Seville in the early twelfth century, that they should not sell books concerning science to the Jews or Christians, because they translate them and attribute them to their co-religionists and their bishops.^[418] In the late thirteenth century the Byzantine scholar who visited Tabriz in search of knowledge, Gregory Chioniades, was told that he could have access to all the sciences except astronomy, since the Persians feared that their king would be overthrown by the Byzantines through using astronomy which they had taken from Persian sources.^[419] In Tang China an Indian astronomer accused Yi Xing of stealing from the Indians when making his new calendar, which had important implications for the state.^[420]

If one was stealing knowledge from another race, one had to use subter­fuge to do so. Chioniades learnt Persian so thoroughly that he inveigled himself into the Ilkhanid king's court and was able to obtain the privileges that other Persians had, gain access to Persian astronomical tables and translate them into Greek. Hugo of Santalla's patron, Michael, bishop of Tarazona in the mid-twelfth century, was able to enter ‘the secret depths of the library' (secreta bibliotece penetralia) of the Islamic petty kings of the Banu Hud and, again, take a work on astronomy, which Hugo translated into Latin.^[421]

One must be wary of the knowledge of foreigners, for it could be used to one's own disadvantage. Ibn ‘Abdun followed up his interdiction against selling books to Christians and Jews by another statement: that Jewish and Christian doctors should not be trusted: they may deliberately harm their Islamic patients.^[422]

But, if one might incur the wrath of one's enemies, one might also meet with suspicion from one's own people. The man who knew too much, especially of ‘foreign sciences', was held in suspicion. In the Muslim context, he could be accused of being a zindiq - a freethinker.^[423] The first scholar to introduce the Arabic astrolabe and the abacus into Europe was accused of having been taught by devils.^[424] Toledo, the most significant locus for the

The transmission of science and philosophy transmission of Arabic science and philosophy to the West also had the reputation for being the centre for the magical arts.^[425] A whole genre - the ars notaria - developed in the West, at the height of the Scholastic period, in order to instruct students how they could acquire knowledge in each of their university subjects in a miraculously short period of time - thus enforcing the association of learning and magic.^[426] In China, too, Yi Xing, the greatest astronomer of the Tang dynasty, had a reputation for magic. The emperor had complained that the head of the Astronomical Bureau had found that the constellation of the Great Bear was missing. Yi Xing said that the only way a disaster could be averted was for the emperor to grant a general amnesty. And, indeed, when he had done so, the stars returned to their proper places.^[427] New ideas could be viewed with suspicion. The scholar who introduced novelties had to act with caution. Adelard of Bath complains, in his dedica­tory preface to his Questions on Natural Science, that his contemporaries think that nothing should be accepted which is discovered by the ‘moderni'.^[428] Hence he attributes his own ideas to the Arabs. In Europe, as in China, innovation was a tricky business.^[429]

With whom should science be shared?

What is important is to make sure the knowledge gets into the right hands. Ahmad ibn Yusuf (Cairo, late ninth to early tenth century) had said in the preface to a book on advanced geometry, claiming the authority of Plato, that one should not reveal the contents of a science irrespective of the student and the occasion, but rather only to an intelligent student in whom the rational power of the soul is dominant.^[430] Hugo of Santalla, in turn, regarded his transmission of Hermetic learning from the Arabs as a privilege only of an intellectual elite. In his preface to Pseudo-Ptolemy's Centiloquium he exhorts his patron, Bishop Michael ‘not to commit the secrets of such

wisdom into the hands of any unworthy individual, or to allow anyone to share in the secrets who rejoices in the number of his books rather than delights in their teaching'.^[431] His contemporary, Hermann of Carinthia, expresses a similar concern about revealing Arabic learning. Like an initiate into mysteries he is afraid to divulge the secret knowledge that he and his collaborator, Robert of Ketton, have learnt from the Arabs.

You [Robert] remember, I think, that, while we went forth from our inner sanctuaries into the public festival of Minerva, the multitude of people milling around were gaping at us with open mouths, not valuing us so much as individuals as admiring the trappings and decorations which long vigils and our most zealous labour had acquired for us from the depths of the treasuries of the Arabs. At that time I began to have a very deep sense of pity concerning those men who were so impressed by these outward appearances. How much they would value the undergarments, if it were lawful for them to look at them!

But he is persuaded in a dream by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, to impart this knowledge to students, for ‘our wealth increases when it is given freely'.^[432]

In order to ensure standards in the transmission of knowledge, official controls could be used. In Song China in the eleventh century, Su Song, a scientist and councillor, and inventor of a very advanced astronomical clock tower, directed ‘a vast imperial plan to amalgamate medical writings and print the ancient medical classics'.^[433] In the Islamic world there was a system of ‘testing' (imtihan), for the professions of doctors, engineers and astronomers. For example, al-Qabisi wrote a ‘Letter for testing those who call themselves astrologers' for his patron, Sayf al-Dawla, the Hamdanid emir of Aleppo from 945 to 967, to enable him, through a set of questions, to separate those who truly knew their art from charlatans and pretenders.^[434]

The Chinese examination system for recruitment into the civil service, based on the Confucian classics, ensured a unity of official knowledge passed on from generation to generation. But side-by-side with this, one had the Buddhist canon (Tripitaka), which included within it texts on scientific subjects, including Greek astronomy as conveyed through Indian conduits.^[435] The preservation and transmission of science, however, belonged to the ‘bureaus', in which different traditions were kept apart. For example, the Islamic astronomical bureau, which was founded in the Yuan period by the Mongols in 1271 and sponsored translations of Islamic astronomy and astrology, such as the Huihui li (‘Western tables') and Kushyar ibn Labban's Introduction to Astrology (both translated by a team with Muslim names in 1383), continued to function alongside the Chinese astronomical bureau for four centuries, until it was displaced by new Western astronomy introduced by the Jesuits.^[436] Like two religions, these two systems, one based on ecliptical coordinates (demarcated by the path of the Sun), the other on equatorial coordinates (demarcated by the equator), existed alongside each other. Thus, in spite of the characteriza­tion of astronomy as an ‘exact science', different traditions can be observed, both in the West and the East, in the same way as different medical traditions could coexist.

The Unani (literally ‘Greek') traditional medicine of modern India and South Asia can be traced back, through Arabic intermediaries, to ancient Greek medicine.^[437] But India also cultivated Buddhist and Hindu (Ayurvedic) medicine, based on ancient Sanskrit sources. These have coexisted in spite of fundamental differences, such as that Greek-Islamic medicine is based on a four-humour system, Ayurvedic on that of three.^[438] Both the Buddhist and the Greek-Islamic tradition (symbolized by the alleged arrival of a doctor called ‘Galen') reached Tibet,^[439] and Tibetan medicine (with its mix of Islamic and Indian) arrived in China.^[440]

Science and religion

One would expect the transmission of science and philosophy to transcend religious boundaries. Hermann of Carinthia, as a translator of Arabic science, scorns Muslims for not believing in the divinity of Christ, but on the other hand praises Arabic authorities for providing scientific evidence which is independent of religion and has always been available (such as the arrange­ment of the stars in the sign of Virgo, which indicate that a child will be born to a Virgin).^[441] Tommaso Giunta, in publishing the Latin translations of the commentaries of Averroes on Aristotle in Venice in 1550, contrasts the inimical and treacherous Ottoman Turks, with the pure wisdom of Averroes, whose Muslim faith is not even mentioned.^[442]

The transformation of science

In the course of transmission, whether by teaching, or through the transla­tion of texts, ideas become transformed, and appropriated to new situations and cultures.^[443] Sometimes, certain ideas were always considered foreign, whereas others from the same source were assimilated into the learning of the new culture.^[444] The transformation of knowledge in respect of the Islamic and Mediterranean tradition has been the subject of a series of projects and conferences in recent years.^[445] The circulation of knowledge during the Middle Millennium on a global level, which includes at least the whole of Eurasia and Africa, is a subject which will continue to engage scholars for many years to come.

FURTHER READING

Akasoy, Anna, Charles Burnett and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, eds. Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.

al-Rodhan, Nayef.The Role of the Arab-Islamic World in the Rise of the West. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Beckwith, Christopher. Warriors of the Cloisters: The Central Asian Origins of Science in the Medieval World. Princeton University Press, 2012.

Burke, Edmund, III. ‘Islam at the Center: Technological Complexes and the Roots of Modernity', Journal of World History 20 (2009): 165-86.

Burnett, Charles. Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

Chrisomalis, Stephen. Numerical Notation: A Comparative History. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Gutas, Dimitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries). London and New York: Routledge, 1988.

Haskins, Charles Homer. Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science, 2nd edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927.

Kingsley, Peter. A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tibet and the Destiny of the Western World. Point Reyes, CA: Golden Sufi Center Publishing, 2010.

Lackner, Michael. ‘Ex Oriente Scientia? Reconsidering the Ideology of a Chinese Origin of Western Knowledge', Asia Major, 3rd series, 21 (2008): 183-200.

Makdisi, George. The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh University Press, 1981.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964.

Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge University Press, 1954-2008.

North, John. Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology. The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Picken, Laurence. Foreword to the first volume of Musica Asiatica. London: Oxford Univer­sity Press, 1977.

Ragep, F. Jamil, Sally Ragep and Steven Livesey, eds. Tradition, Transmission, Transform­ation. Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-Modern Science Held at the University of Oklahoma. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

Rashed, Roshdi and Regis Morelon, eds. Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 3 vols. London: Routledge, 1996.

Saliba, George. Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Selin, Helaine, ed. Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Non­Western Cultures. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Press, 1997).

Science in the Medieval World: ‘Book of the Categories of nations' by Said al-Andalusi. Trans. Semaan I. Salem and Alok Kumar. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1991.

Speer, Andreas and Lydia Wegener, eds. Wissen uber Grenzen: Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter. Miscellanea Mediaevalia 33. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2006.

Tischler, Matthias M. and Alexander Fidora, eds. Christlicher Norden - Muslimischer Suden: Anspruehe und Wirklichkeiten von Christen, Juden und Muslimen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Hoch- und Spdtmittelalter. Frankfurt: Aschendorff, 2011.

van Dalen, Benno and Charles Burnett, eds. ‘Between Orient and Occident: Transform­ation of Knowledge', Annals of Science 68 (2011), Special Issue.

Wujastyk, Dominik. The Roots of Ayurveda. London: Penguin Books, 1998.