The fable of the transmission of ancient learning Arabic
New History Review, No. 1, July-August 2002
To believe our textbooks, past and even more than today The legacy of Greece and Rome was completely ignored in the Western world, the fall of the Roman Empire and the development of Christianity to the "Renaissance": night of the Middle Ages, a thousand years of darkness!
And to say the same token, the authors of antiquity were not only known through the Arabs, translators applied only interested only able to operate and transmit this culture that scorned our clerics.
Speaking of "Arabs" is already a mistake. In the countries of Islam, Arabs, scholars and translators, were certainly far fewer than the Persians, Egyptians and Christians from Syria and Iraq. Most Greek texts were first translated into Syriac, Aramaic speaking city of Edessa, which has largely survived in Islam and does not disappear in the thirteenth century. At the time of al Ma'mum, seventh Abbasid caliph (813-833), ibn Isbak Hunan, the most famous of the Hellenistic privileged guest of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, was a Christian. It has long traveled in Asia Minor in order to collect Greek manuscripts, he translated or had translated under his direction. Our books often speak of scholars and translators of Toledo, who at the time of the Caliphs of Cordoba, had studied and made known to the ancient authors. But they forget to remember that this cathedral city - like many others and many monasteries - was already under the barbarian kings, long before the Muslim occupation, a large outbreak of intellectual life permeated ancient culture. The clerics remained Christians, well aware of the importance of passing this legacy, have simply continued their work under new masters.
wants us to believe the worst follies and we watch the monks, ignorant copyists, busy not only transcribe the sacred texts, eager to incinerate valuable manuscripts which they could not understand. However, no witness, in the dark Middle Ages never saw a library set on fire and many are, instead, talk about bringing major monasteries of ancient texts funds. It is clear that the major centers of Greek studies ranged not only in Islamic countries, but in Byzantium. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Emperor (913-951), was surrounded by a circle of scholars and humanists encyclopedists; the frescoes of the imperial palaces recounted the exploits of Achilles and Alexander. Patriarch Photius (d. 895) inaugurated in his first book, Myriobiblion a long series of analysis and exegesis ancient authors. Psellus Michel (d. 1078) commented Plato and tried to associate Christianity with Greek thought. No trace in the Church, neither East nor West, of any fanaticism, while Muslims themselves relate many examples of the wrath of their theologians and religious leaders against their profane studies. Al-Hakim, the Fatimid caliph of Cairo (996-1021), jewelry banned for women, men, chess, and students, books pagans. At the same time, Spain, al-Mansur, to win the support of theologians (Muslims), burned thousands of manuscripts Greek and Roman of the great library of Cordova. The Christian West has not experienced a crisis under this type.
The "Arabs" have sought and certainly less studied Greek and Roman writers as Christians. Those of the West did not need their help, with, of course, at their disposal in their countries, funds of ancient texts, Latin and Greek, collected from the time of the Roman Empire and left in place. Anyway, that Byzantium, not in the "Arabs" that the clergy of Europe went further their knowledge of antiquity. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land ecumenical councils, travel prelates in Constantinople maintained and strengthened all kinds of intellectual ties. In Spain the Visigoths, monasteries (Dumio near Braga, Agaliense near Toledo, Caulanium near Mérida), the episcopal schools (Seville, Tarragona, Toledo), the kings and nobles, collecting old books for their libraries . The country of Iberia was used to relay on the road towards the sea to Ireland and Brittany, where the monks, too, studied the secular texts from antiquity.
Can we forget that the Byzantines in the years 550, conquered and occupied the whole of Italy, the maritime provinces of Spain and much of what had been Roman Africa? What Greek Ravenna remained for over two hundred years, and that the Italians called the region of Romagna, land of the Romans, that is to say, the Byzantines, heirs of the Roman Empire?
Byzantium was the major source of transmission
Nothing is said either the role of merchants in Italy, Provence and Catalonia, which, as early as the Mille, the regularly frequented stopovers East, and more often than Cairo Constantinople. Should see blind, soulless and brainless, without any curiosity as their spices? The pattern has emerged, but it is wrong. Burgundio of Pisa, the son of a wealthy family, lived in Constantinople for five years, from 1135 to 1140, among merchants in his city. He brought a copy of Pandects, a collection of laws of Rome, attended by the Emperor Justinian, piously preserved by later in their Medici Laurentian Library. Hellenist end, he translated the works of scholars and Hippocrates and Galen proposed to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa an entire program other translations Greek writers of antiquity. This man, this scholar, who owed nothing to the Arabs, had many disciples and imitators, as the canon Rolando Bandinelli, who became pope in 1159 (Alexander III).
Making Westerners rely on lessons provided by the Arabs is too much prejudice and ignorance: nothing but a fable, reflecting a curious tendency to denigrate himself.
Jacques Heers
http://www.canalacademie.com/L-oeuvre-de-l-historien-Jacques.html
medievalist, Jacques Heers also offers us on this show a reflection on the historiography of the twentieth century through his book The History murdered, published by Editions de Paris in 2006. Thinking and uncompromising about the University and the cliches of our history.
History
murdered by Jacques Heers Editions de Paris
His bibliography:
History murdered Editions For 2006 Paris Gilles de Rais Editions Perrin, 2005 slavers of Islam - The first dealt with black VIIth-fifteenth centuries to the Editions Perrin, 2003 and died
Fall of Constantinople - 1204-1453 Editions Perrin city in the Middle Ages in the West by Editions Hachette The papal court at the time of the Borgias Medicis and Louis XI by Editions Hachette Editions Perrin The First Crusade by Editions Perrin The Barbary - Race and War in the Mediterranean, XIV-XVI century by Editions Perrin
the First Crusade to liberate Jerusalem at Editions Perrin From St. Louis to Louis XI Editions Bartillat Jacques Coeur Editions Perrin Festivals and carnivals crazy Editions Hachette A History of the Middle Ages to Gilles de Rais Puf Editions Perrin - The family clan in the Middle Ages - Study of political and social structures in urban Puf The West in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries - the West in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. the Puf - Middle-age a sham by Editions Perrin 1492-1530 Rush America - mirages and fevers? Publishing Complex in Columbus, Hachette Literature
http://www.canalacademie.com/Jacques-Heers.html
Wikipedia:
Jacques Heers, associate history in 1949. Between 1949 and 1951, he became a professor at Le Mans and Alençon, and finally to the National Military Prytaneum.
From 1951 he was attached to the CNRS. Therefore, he meets the great Fernand Braudel, who sends a doctorate in Italy state spent in Genoa in the fifteenth century. He defended his thesis at the Sorbonne in 1958. In his return from Italy, he became assistant to Georges Duby, Faculty of Letters of Aix-en-Provence. In 1957 he was appointed professor at the University of Algiers, where he practices for five years until 1962. Subsequently, he was successively professor at Caen, Rouen, Paris X University and the Sorbonne.
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