Arab Transmission of the Classics: Difference between revisions

Knowledge of Aristotle came by two routes to the West. One was by Latin translations directly from the Greek made in the twelfth century (see below).  The other was by Latin translations from the Arabic, which were themselves translations from ''Syriac'' into Arabic of philosophical and scientific works that had been preserved by Eastern Christians in Mesopatamia, Syria and Egypt.  The translators were mostly Nestorian and Jacobite Christians, working in the two hundred years following the early Abbasid period (c. 800). The most important translator of this group was the Syriac-speaking Christian Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (809-873), known to the Latins as ''Joannitius''.  The texts were first translated into Syriac from the Greek, then into Arabic. Despite this process, the translations were generally accurate, aiming for a literal reading rather than elegance.<ref>Hyman & Walsh p. 204</ref>