The Toledo school
Translators in Toledo, Spain during the Moorish rule 
Al-Andalus: where three worlds met

Abdurrahman Badawi



IT was not until the twelfth century that the first college of translators from Arabic into Latin was set up in spain, in the city of Toledo. It was founded by Don Raimundo, archbishop of Toledo from 1126 to 1151. A Benedictine monk who had been born at Agen in south-western France, Raimundo was convinced of the importance of the Arab philosophers for an understanding of Aristotle, and he decided to make their works available in Latin.

Domingo Gundisalvo, archdeacon of Segovia, was one of the most eminent of the scholars recruited by Raimundo. He translated much of the encyclopaedic Kitab al Shifa' ("Book of Healing") by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) as well as al-Ghazali's Maqasid al-falasifah ("The Aims of the Philosophers") and al-Farabi's Ihsa 'al-ulum ("Catalogue of the Sciences").

But Gundisalvo knew no Arabic. He used a Jewish or Muslim intermediary to translate from Arabic into Castilian, and then put the Castilian into Latin. Among his Jewish collaborators two names feature prominently: a certain Salomon and, more importantly, one Johannes Avendeath (who also appears as Avendear, Johannes ben David, Johannes Hispanus, and also John of Seville). The exact identity of these two has aroused much discussion.

The most important of the Toledan translators was undoubtedly Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187). Thanks to a brief notice left by his pupils on his life and work, we know that Gerard came to Toledo after finishing his studies in Italy, in order to learn more about the Almagest. This vast astronomical treatise by Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy), the celebrated second-century-AD Greek astronomer, mathematician and geographer, was then only available in Arabic. In fact gerard discovered a multitude of scientific works in Arabic in Toledo, and immediately began to learn the language so as to read them and, later, to render them into Latin. He ventually translated more than seventy of them, including the Almagest, which he completed in 1175.

His translations cover virtually the entire field of science of his time. Among them are several treatises by Aristotle (The Physics, On Heaven and Earth, On Generation and Corruption, and The Meteors), as well as books by al-Kindi, Ptolemy, Isaac Isreli, Ibn Sina, Galen and others.

The other great translator was Michael Scot (c.1175-c.1235). Born in England, he studied at Oxford University and then in Paris before settling in Toledo. After learning Arabic and Hebrew, he became a prolific translator of Arabic into Latin. Near the end of his life he was invited to the court of the Emperor Frederick II in Sicily, the other great centre of translation from the Arabic.

Scot's translations included many commentaries on Aristotle by Ibn Rushd (Averroes) as well as al-Bitruji's work on the spheres, which was to have a great influence on astronomical knowledge.

The Toledan translations raise problems of attribution. The French writer and historian Ernest Renan wrote in a study of Averroes: "It is certain that the Latins who journeyed to Toledo had no scruples about appropriating the work of their secretaries, and . . . the name of the translator was often a fiction.

"Nearly always a Jew, often a converted Muslim, did a rough translation, substituting words in Latin or the vernacular for the Arabic original. A clerk would supervise this process, taking responsibility for the final Latin version and putting his name to the work. This explains why one translation is often attributed to different individuals."

Renan's view was shared by the great American medievalist Charles Homer Haskins in his book on the twelfth-century Renaissance. It is also supported by some translations in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, which were rendered from Arabic into Latin by way of Spanish.

The extraordinary achievements of the Toledan translators were in reality the joint work of Muslim Arabs, Jews and Latin Christians. It would be unjust to give the credit exclusively to the latter, even though many of the manuscripts, and many historians, mention only their names. Gundisalvo, Gerard of Cremona, Michael Scot and others all called on the help of Muslim Arabs or more often of Jews in the course of their work. Sometimes the task of the Latin Chritian translators was limited to putting into good Latin what their assistants had already translated into bad Latin or Spanish.

The great enterprise of translation from Arabic into Latin began in Spain in the twelfth century, and Toledo was its most active centre. But it also took place in other cities of the peninsula including Barcelona, Tarragona, Segovia, Leon and Pamplona. The task was subsequently taken up on the other side of the Pyrenees, in Toulouse, Beziers, Narbonne, Montpellier and Marseilles.

It was thanks to these translations that Europe came to know both the works of the Greek philosophers, mathematicians, doctors and astronomers and those of their Arabic commentators or emulators. As Haskins wrote, "The reception of this knowledge by western Europe marks a crucial turning-point in the history of European thought."

ABDURRAHMAN BADAWI, of Egypt, is a philosopher and historian of philosophy. A former head of the departments of philosophy at a number of universities in Egypt, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and Kuwait, and a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, Paris, he is the author of over a hundred publications in French and in Arabic, mainly concerned with existentialism, Greek and Arab philosophy, and contemporary German philosophy.

Source: UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1991 - COPYRIGHT 1991 UNESCO - COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
 

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