Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement

Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement

The “translation movement” was the period from about 800 A.D. to 1150 A.D. when Islamic scholars actively sought out and translated Classical Greek texts into Arabic. Translations included the works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Ptolemy,and Galen, among many others. By it's end, every treatise written by Aristotle, except Politica, was translated (Peters 61). The Arabic translators first accessed Classical Greek texts through contact with the Hellenized Syrio-Christians in Iraq, who had initiated a translation movement of Greek literature into Syriac about 450 A.D. The earliest Arabic versions of Classical Greek texts were therefore translated from Syriac, not Greek or Latin, into Arabic (Lockwood 124).

Aristotle teaching,British Library Document

From: Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1976). Islamic

Science:An Illustrated Study

Abassid Dynasty

The translation movement followed an intense period of Muslim conquests. From 560 A.D. to 732 A.D., the Islamic armies conquered the Roman Empire, Syria, Egypt, Spain, and some parts of North Africa and Asia Minor. After the steady years of war and empire building, the Abassid Dynasty came into power in the ninth century. They established their center in Baghdad and opened their kingdom to the West. The rulers Harun Al-Rashid and his son, Al-Mamun, devoted the empire to the study of sciences, culture, and the arts, while actively seeking knowledge from other cultures. Within fifty years of the establishment of the dynasty, Baghdad was the cultural center of the world. Al-Mamun established the Baghdad school called the “House of Wisdom,” where Al-Fārābī taught (Ezzaher 45).

Intensely interested in Classical Greek culture and its philosophical writing, Al-Mamun enthusiastically promoted the translation of philosophical and scientific texts. During this period of intense knowledge-gathering and cultural openness, Muslims incorporated Greek thought into their Islamic religious tradition and developed Islamic philosophy (falsalfa). The blooming of knowledge and philosophy infused the empire from Baghdad to Spain, and according to many scholars, awakened the European Renaissance (Ezzahar 46).

The Commentaries

The translation projects flourished under the Abassids. In the early part of the movement, translators attempted to precisely match Syriac words to Arabic. This presented problems due to the differing syntax of the languages and sometimes the lack of corresponding words. Later translations improved as the translators focused on matching the meaning of the text rather than the literal matching of the words, and developed the device of adding summulae, consisting of abridged paraphrases, elucidations, and comments, beside the texts (Peters 62).

The Arab philosophers both generated influential commentaries and inherited them. Aristotle entered the Muslim world via translations that were “to some degree colored by the interpretations attached to them in their earlier career. Arabs inherited the tradition after five hundred years of shaping in the Greek schools and two hundred years of shaping by the Syrian Christians” (Peters 7).

European Introduction

The Moors brought the contributions of Avicenna and Al-Fārābī to the Arabic translations of the Classical Greeks to Spain. Christian scholars were introduced to these texts with commentary (summulae) about 1150, and initiated translations into Latin. Gerard of Cremona was the greatest of the translators, producing more than seventy translations from Arabic into Latin, including the Arabic texts of Aristotle. Latin interpretations of the commentaries of Averroes became available in the early thirteenth century. Because of their influence on the translation and interpretation of the texts, the Islamic writers of commentaries became closely identified with the Greek authors, especially Aristotle (Lockwood 124-25).

Works Cited

Ezzaher, Lahcen E. "From Greek into Arabic." Writing and Cultural Influence: Studies in Rhetorical History, Oriental Discourse, and Post-Colonial Criticism. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2003. 43-64.
Lockwood, Dean P. "Two Thousand Years of Latin Translation from the Greek." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philogical Association, 1918. v49. 115-29.
Peters, F. E. Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotlean Tradition in Islam. New York: New York University Press, 1968.

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