Baghdad
The Abbasid capital founded in 762, where most of this translation work was paid for.
What is Baghdad?
The language older Greek, Persian, and Indian works were translated into.
What is Arabic?
The field named from al-Khwarizmi’s book al-Jabr.
What is algebra?
The two places where Arabic learning most reliably passed into Latin Europe.
What are Spain (Toledo) and Sicily?
The three jobs of this lesson, in order.
What are translate, add, and pass west? (Accept preserve, expand, transmit.)
The family of caliphs who took power in 750 and sponsored this scholarship.
Who are the Abbasids?
A common two-step path for a Greek book before it was Arabic.
What is Greek into Syriac, then Syriac into Arabic?
The number system al-Khwarizmi explained, which we still use.
What are Indian (Hindu-Arabic) numerals?
The Spanish city taken in 1085, where Arabic libraries were translated into Latin in the 1100s.
What is Toledo?
The rough years this lesson uses for the height of this work.
What is about 750 to 1250?
The caliph who ruled from 813 to 833 and is most closely tied to the translation effort.
Who is al-Ma'mun?
The Christian scholar who was the leading translator of Greek medicine.
Who is Hunayn ibn Ishaq?
The physician who wrote a book separating smallpox from measles.
Who is al-Razi?
The translator in Toledo who put Ptolemy’s Almagest and al-Khwarizmi into Latin. He died in 1187.
Who is Gerard of Cremona?
True or false, answered as a question: they only saved Greek books and invented nothing
What is false?
The usual name for the caliph’s library and the scholars around it.
What is the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma)?
Two Greek authors translated for medicine and for astronomy. Name either pair’s fields, or name Galen and Ptolemy.
Who are Galen and Ptolemy? (Accept Aristotle and Euclid.)
The author of The Canon of Medicine, later used in European universities.
Who is Ibn Sina (Avicenna)?
The island where Greek, Arabic, and Latin were all in use under Norman and later rulers, including Frederick II.
What is Sicily?
The year the Mongols sacked Baghdad. Learning did not all disappear that year.
What is 1258?
The writing material from China that made books cheaper than parchment in the 700s.
What is paper?
These translators were not all Muslims. Name the three faiths working in this scholarship.
What are Islam, Christianity, and Judaism?
The author of the Book of Optics, who tested how light enters the eye instead of only quoting Greek
Who is Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)?
This military movement is not the main way these books reached Europe.
What are the Crusades?
Why a Latin student might know Aristotle through Arabic rather than through a Greek copy kept only in Constantinople.
What is: many Greek works were translated into Arabic, then from Arabic into Latin in Spain or Sicily?