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This is not even close to true. The Byzantine Empire was the keeper of all of this western knowledge. The arabs got their texts from them and the Spanish from t
by christkv 7mo ago
This is not even close to true. The Byzantine Empire was the keeper of all of this western knowledge. The arabs got their texts from them and the Spanish from them and the Byzantines. The arabs did trade texts from India to Europe as well.
- griffzhowl 7mo agoNevertheless, many of the texts from the Greeks were first translated into Latin from Arabic copies in Spain from the 11th century, because the Greek versions were inaccessible in Western Europe until Constantinople was conquered in 1453 and the scholars escaped to the west with their scrolls
- christkv 7mo agoThey transmitted the text yeah but they were not the “preserver” of the roman legacy. The byzantines viewed themselves as romans.
- griffzhowl 7mo agoI was talking about Greek texts rather than Roman legacy, whatever that means. Arabs certainly preserved some of the Greek texts, because many haven't survived in origianl Greek manuscripts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Arabic_translation_movement#Lack_of_original_Greek_texts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Arabic_translation_move... The Muslims also made original contributions to science, e.g. Ibn Sahl discovering what later became known as Snell's law of refraction.