Europe and Islam

Cardini, Franco. Europe and Islam. trans. Caroline Beamish. Malden,

Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc, 2001.
This book provides insight into contacts with Europeans and Muslims, and their
relationships. It will help me to better understand the interactions of these two groups.

***all quoted***

90-the Iberian peninsula was the real home of the scientific revival in the westa

90-scientific knowledge diffused throughout the muslim world via the language of the
holy Koran, had made a promising start in the ibernain peninsula thanks to an earlier
scholar, Gerbert of Aurillac, wno traveled to catalonia as a very young man. Between 967
an 970, he had learned the rudiments of Arabic arimetic and arsronmy in the bishops
cruia in Vich. Having b/cm head of the spiscopla college in Reims, then abbot of Bobbio,
Gerbert was able to share his learning b/f ascending to the papal throne, with the fateful
name of Sylvester II.

90-This process, which began mainly in spain, and in which peter the Vernerbales team of
translators undoubtedly took part, would have been less straightforward and certainly
much less rapid and productive if contact with arab culture had no suddenly been made
indispensable by a sudden overwhelming growth in the economy and in trade.

91- The latins did not simply receive this vast body of knowledge, they elaborated it
enormously

91-Medicine was for a long time a favored subject for translation. Alfano, a monk from
Montescassio, translated several tects from Greek in the 11th century. In the latter half of
the 11th c however, another monk from montescassino, Constantine the arican who came
fro what is today Tunisia, increased the medical libraries of the west enormously by
translating into latin from Arabic and from greek books. One important center of medical
studies was Selerno, where scientific knowledge was obtained from greek culture, from
the arab work (via sicily and north Africa) anf from jewish culture.

91-The books on math and medicine, and their translationos were a response to practicle
and technical needs.

91-Ibn sina- wrote the canon, which was still in use in the universities of Europe in the
17th c. he was the most famous author of medical texts in the west after the classical
authors hippocrates and galen.

93- was the 13th c pro-islamic? It was certainly one of the greatest centuries in European
thought and crucial to the building of the cultural identity of the continent. It also remains
one of the moments in history when christinaity and islam- in spite of the crusades, or
perhaps b/c of them- we closest together.

93-The relationship btwn the two civilizations, or their association shows both societies
in a favorable light.

96- The fact that sicily at that period became a center of aristotlian thought, filtered
principally through the work of avicenna and averroes, was due to Michael scot. He
himself was interested in many respects, alchemy and physiognomy. He wrote copiously
on the two latter subjects, heavily influence in his works by ar-razi, Abu Ma’ shar and al-
Farghani.