Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gerard of Cremona

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 21 posts

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#11

Post by fmajid »

jmclnx wrote: post #3

Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived. But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?

Not just ancients' knowledge, algebra comes from a corruption of al-jabr in Musa al Khwarizmi's "al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah". al-Khwarzimi himself got corrupted to algorismus, from which the word algorithm came from. Also, 2/3 of named stars have Arabic-origin names. Arabic influence on medecine and chemistry was significant, the word alcohol is also of Arabic origin, as is Chemistry via al-kimiya, alchemy. And finally, admirals are amir-al-bahr, emirs of the sea.

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#12

Post by christkv »

canjobear wrote: post #4
jmclnx wrote: post #3

Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived. But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?

> Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived. I was taught this many times in US schools.

And its a fabrication of history

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#13

Post by tgv »

jmclnx wrote: post #3

Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived. But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?

The fall of Rome is 5th century, so it predates Islam, doesn't it?

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#14

Post by nestorD »

For people wondering why the Islamic world would have had more texts, many of which are of western (Greek/Latin) origin, than the western world. The problem is that, as the Roman empire collapsed, papyrus supply disappeared in the west (while north Africa still had papyrus, and later early paper) forcing copyist to use-significantly more expensive and lower supply-parchment. As the texts on papyrus started to crumble to dust, monks had to decide which ones to save given the limited writing material available (so they saved a lot of Saint Augustin...).

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#15

Post by [deleted] »

jmclnx wrote: post #3

Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived. But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?

[deleted]

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#16

Post by griffzhowl »

christkv wrote: post #10
jmclnx wrote: post #3

Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived. But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?

This is not even close to true. The Byzantine Empire was the keeper of all of this western knowledge. The arabs got their texts from them and the Spanish from them and the Byzantines. The arabs did trade texts from India to Europe as well.

Nevertheless, many of the texts from the Greeks were first translated into Latin from Arabic copies in Spain from the 11th century, because the Greek versions were inaccessible in Western Europe until Constantinople was conquered in 1453 and the scholars escaped to the west with their scrolls

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#17

Post by christkv »

griffzhowl wrote: post #16
christkv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not even close to true. The Byzantine Empire was the keeper of all of this western knowledge. The arabs got their texts from them and the Spanish from them and the Byzantines. The arabs did trade texts from India to Europe as well.

Nevertheless, many of the texts from the Greeks were first translated into Latin from Arabic copies in Spain from the 11th century, because the Greek versions were inaccessible in Western Europe until Constantinople was conquered in 1453 and the scholars escaped to the west with their scrolls

They transmitted the text yeah but they were not the “preserver” of the roman legacy. The byzantines viewed themselves as romans.

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#18

Post by layer8 »

jmclnx wrote: post #3

Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived. But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?

Rather, thanks to the scholars of the Byzantine Empire, aka the Eastern Roman Empire.

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#19

Post by riffraff »

tgv wrote: post #13
jmclnx wrote: post #3

Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived. But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?

The fall of Rome is 5th century, so it predates Islam, doesn't it?

That's the western half, but ehen the Ottomans annexed bisantium in 1400 they still considered themselves Romans, even tho they spoke Greek. The date of the fall of Rome is pretty arbitrary.

The sultan took the title of kaiser-i-rum (Caesar of Rome).

Re: Gerard of Cremona

#20

Post by griffzhowl »

christkv wrote: post #17
griffzhowl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevertheless, many of the texts from the Greeks were first translated into Latin from Arabic copies in Spain from the 11th century, because the Greek versions were inaccessible in Western Europe until Constantinople was conquered in 1453 and the scholars escaped to the west with their scrolls

They transmitted the text yeah but they were not the “preserver” of the roman legacy. The byzantines viewed themselves as romans.

I was talking about Greek texts rather than Roman legacy, whatever that means. Arabs certainly preserved some of the Greek texts, because many haven't survived in origianl Greek manuscripts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Arabic_translation_move...

The Muslims also made original contributions to science, e.g. Ibn Sahl discovering what later became known as Snell's law of refraction.

Post reply on HN