Studies in Arabic Astronomy in the Early Crusader States

Abstract

The arrival of Ptolemaic astronomy in Latin Europe from Greek and Arabic sources in the twelfth century ushered in one of the epoch-making changes in the history of European science. The rediscovery of Ptolemy’s ideas by medieval Latin scholars was not an incidental or an isolated event; rather it took place in a period of extensive intellectual transfer, which had begun in the late eleventh century and had involved many parts of the Mediterranean world, across continents, cultures, and religions. Especially on the part of western Europeans, one incentive to seek foreign knowledge at that time was the growing awareness that substantial parts of the classical Greek learning of Antiquity had become lost in the Latin tradition. A well-known example is the works of Aristotle, of which only fragments had survived in western libraries. And while the traditional canon of the seven liberal arts still defined the framework of learning in medieval Europe, the lack of authoritative standard works was keenly felt—especially in the mathematical sciences, among them astronomy, since for centuries the works of Euclid and Ptolemy had also been inaccessible to Latin readers. These texts continued to be transmitted in the Greek-speaking parts of the eastern Mediterranean, and they were even more eagerly studied in Arab countries, where Greek science and philosophy had been introduced in the ninth century and where they had laid the foundations for many independent intellectual developments.