Yes, the Arabs translated Greek works, but the works would have survived without the Arabic translation. They weren't the only surviving translations. Note, the reason the Arabic sources got hold of the Greek manuscripts that they translated in the first place was not because they were out to save manuscripts. They were conquering Western territory. They were in the process of deconstructing the Byzantines and converting, killing or driving out the Christians from land that had been Christian for 500 years, and pagan Roman before that.JOZeldenrust wrote: The works of Aristotle were only reintroduced in Christian Europe through Arabic translations in the twelfth century. Specifically Aristotle wouldn't have survived without the Muslims, and we'd still be stuck with neoplatonist philosophy as the dominant philosophical school.
Let's remember that the "Greek World" before the Muslim scourge in the 7th century began was not only Greece, but present day Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, the Holy Land, Egypt, etc. The Greek masters' works existed all over the Greek world and many librarys, all of which were part of the Byzantine Empire. It was the Western part of the Roman Empire, Italy and West, that was what really fell into heavy decline. The Eastern Empire/Byzantiaum hung on for another 1,000 years.
The Byzantine Theodoros of Gaza translated Greek works of Aristotle into Latin. That was in the 1400s. Note - Theodorus translated GREEK works of Aristotle to Latin, not Arabic - Greek. The mistake people make when they talk about the "transmission of the classics" is one of exclusivity. Yes, by all means - Arabs did translate Aristotle and Greek works into Arabic - and yes, by all means, when western Europeans reconquered Spain from the invading Muslims, they found and translated the Arabic translations. That doesn't mean, however, that the works were otherwise lost BUT FOR the Arabic translations. There were still Greek Translations, and like in the example of Theodorus, they were translated from the original Greek, without need of the transmission through Arabic translators, to Latin.
That's not precisely true. The idea that "Christian Europe" was in this "Dark Age" is a very linear and simplistic way to look at the history of Europe. I'll point out again that a good deal of Europe was in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire and ultimately Byzantium, which was Christian, ruled from Constantinople, and they did not destroy the Classics. The Western parts, like France and England and Italy were much poorer, much more war ridden, and lost a lot of the the scientific and philosophical learning not because Christianity wanted it gotten rid of, but because it was war ridden - overrun by Germanic tribes - Goths - Visigoths - Ostrogoths - that were largely uninterested in learning of any kind.JOZeldenrust wrote:
The Arabs weren't more developed then Christian Europe because they were somehow better, but they were more developed. European thinking had ground into immovable paths, and the Arabs were still looking at the world with fresh eyes.
The Mongols in 1258 stuck a fork in the already dying Abbasids. The Muslim war machine still raged of course, which how we lost Byzantium, and how we were stuck dealing with the Ottoman Empire for 500 years.JOZeldenrust wrote:
Also, the downfall of the Muslim civilization isn't just because of the Mongols. The fall of Al Andalus was an important contributing factor.
The light of civilization was Byzantium. The Arabic world supplanted Byzantium by conquest. They owe their "civilization" to what they stole from the Byzantines. What they brought out of Arabia was a brutal religion.JOZeldenrust wrote:
The Arab world from the eighth to the fourteenth century wasn't some kind of Eutopia, but compared to the rest of the world it was very much civilized, and it had a profound influence on the development toward civilization of Christian Europe. FFS, we owe our concept of courtesy to the Arabs.
Again - the Byzantine Empire did, and in fact did preserve those works.JOZeldenrust wrote:
ETA: Europe wasn't out to destroy anything, we just didn't have the infrastructure to preserve those works.
