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Abstract

The role played by the 'Arabs', i.e. the peoples of Arabic-Islamic civilization, in the transmission and development of the sciences--from Antiquity and into medieval Europe--is well known. In the present contribution it is discussed in which way the 'Arabs' formed their own scientific terminology and in which way they contributed to the formation and development of the Western, European scientific terminology. In the translations of scientific works from Arabic into Latin in the middle ages, mainly four ways of rendering the Arabic terminology are observed: simple transliteration; modified Latinized transliteration; literal translation; and free rendering by newly formed or inherited Latin or Greek terms. In the course of time, transliterated Arabic terms were more and more suppressed--though many of them live on among us until today--and supplied by corresponding Western terminology.