> Back in December I wrote about the myth that ancient Greek texts only survived by being preserved in the mediaeval Islamic world. ... But first, I’d better re

> Back in December I wrote about the myth that ancient Greek texts only survived by being preserved in the mediaeval Islamic world. ... But first, I’d better repeat that it is a myth. ... Only in a tiny number of cases do we rely on translations for ancient Greek texts But the second statement of the myth they are trying to deflate doesn't contradict the first statement at all. Ancient Greek texts could have survived by being preserved in the medieval Islamic world in Greek (not in translation). I'm not saying they were (I don't know) but it's a bit of a bait-and-switch argument. > Greek texts were primarily preserved and transmitted in Greek-speaking regions of the empire, that is (initially) in Greece, Anatolia, greater Syria, and Egypt. Okay, but Greater Syria and Egypt were lost to the Byzantine Empire during the Islamic expansion of the 7th century, And the whole "Muslim scholars preserved the ancient greek tradition" narrative is obviously about that later time period, so those don't seem relevant.