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Section 4
Whose Science is Arabic Science
in Renaissance Europe?
By
© George Saliba
Columbia University
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Travelers
In Search Of Science |
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At this point, a word should be
said about the people who can be documented as being responsible for this
"transmission" in order to complicate the picture further, and to make
the point much more clearly. For that purpose, I will now turn to two scientists
from the sixteenth century whose lives can be placed within the context
of this transmission of science under discussion. |
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The men in question are Guillaume
Postel, a French man who was born around 1510 and died 1581,21
and Ignatius Ni‘matallah (or Nehemias as he was known to his Latin contemporaries)
who was a Patriarch of the Syrian Jacobite church of Antioch. We do not
know when the latter was born, but we know that he became Patriarch of
the Jacobite Antiochian church in 1557 and died towards the end of the
century (c. 1590) after living a fruitful and adventurous life as we shall
see.22 |
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(25) |
In the case of the Frenchman Postel23
(slide 25), we have very little information
about his early life. But he must have been very well educated, and at
some point he apparently started learning oriental languages, namely Hebrew
and Arabic. He must have attained some fame on account of his dabbling
in such oriental languages, for he was called upon by King François
I (1515-47) to accompany the French ambassador Jean De La Forêt to
the Turkish court in Constantinople at the occasion of negotiating with
the Turkish court the French Ottoman alliance/treaty of 1536. Postel was
apparently charged with the specific mission of collecting oriental manuscripts
for the king’s library and it was probably thought that he could also act
as an interpreter on account of his knowledge of oriental languages. |
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(26)
(27&28)
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The fact that he did indeed go on
this trip and that he collected oriental manuscripts, and scientific ones
for that matter, is indisputable, for it is clearly attested in at least
one note (slide 26) on one Arabic astronomical
manuscript. The note clearly states that he was in Constantinople in the
year 1536, the year when the treaty was actually concluded, and when he
presumably bought this manuscript. He obviously brought it back with him
to France, when he returned that year or the year after. The manuscript
now rests together with thousands others in the collection of oriental
manuscripts at the Bibliothèque National in Paris (slides
27&28). |
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(29&30) |
We also know that Postel made another
trip to the east sometime between the years 1548 and 1551, and have collected
other manuscripts as well but, so far, we have no clear attestation of
the dates and places as we do with the Paris manuscript. It should be recalled
and stressed, however, that the subject matter of the Parisian manuscript
is theoretical astronomy, and it can be clearly demonstrated that Postel
had studied this manuscript very closely as can be easily noted from his
annotations on the margins (slides
29&30) of many of its 156 folios. The annotations of this Parisian
manuscript form the subject of a forthcoming study by the present author
in order to determine their extent, as well as their nature. |
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(31&32)
(33) |
Another Arabic manuscript, that
was equally annotated by Postel, is now kept at the Vatican Library, (slides
31&32) together with thousands others as well, in what is by far
one of the most prestigious European collections of oriental manuscripts.24
In addition, the Vatican manuscript also happens to be an astronomical
manuscript, and that was probably why it was also annotated by Postel (slide
33). As it turned out, the manuscript is just another copy of the work
of the same astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi whose theorem, the Tusi Couple,
was alluded to before (slide 34), and
is indeed contained in this manuscript as well. |
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Taken together, the evidence illustrated
by these two manuscripts demonstrates very clearly the availability of
very sophisticated Arabic astronomical texts to the contemporaries of Copernicus
in a language that they could read and understand. Thus the evidence also
speaks very clearly to the fact that those contemporaries did not apparently
need those texts to be translated into Latin in order to make use of them
with their own students and colleagues as the extensive annotations clearly
demonstrate. Other manuscripts still kept at the Bodleian (Oxford), the
Laurentiana (Florence) and many other European libraries have other forms
of annotations and interlinear translations of manuscripts similar to those.
But the space and time do not permit any detailed treatment of them here.
Let it only be said that the example of Postel is by no means unique. |
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Returning to Postel, we also know
that his erudition must have greatly impressed the royal court in France.
On account of that, he was appointed, after his second trip to the east,
as a professor of mathematics and oriental languages in what was called
then l’Institut Royal, and later became the Collège de France. On
another philosophical manuscript that he also owned, and probably also
purchased during his trips to the east, now kept at the University of Leiden
Library, he signs his name as "Royal Professor of mathematics."25
Because of his own personality traits though, he apparently did not remain
in such high esteem at the court, and stayed in the post of a royal professor
of mathematics for a few years only. After that he seems to have resigned
his job in order to resume his travels that can be documented within the
European area, especially into Italy and Vienna, and of course back to
France. |
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Looking back at the annotations
of the two manuscripts he owned, would it be far fetched to postulate that
he could have very well used them in teaching his students since a good
number of the annotations, especially at the beginning of the Paris manuscript,
involve many definitions of basic technical astronomical terms as if he
was himself learning astronomy or intending to teach the same? Would it
also be far fetched to assume that he used them in his own cosmological
writings which we know he produced? And finally, what would one call the
kind of science produced by Postel? Needless to say that the answers
to such questions definitely have very significant implications to what
one could call "Arabic/Islamic" science or "French/Latin/western" or "Renaissance"
science. |
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The rest of Postel’s life does not
concern us directly at this point, but it should be probably said that
during his various travels he almost always passed through northern Italy,
and through Venice in particular, and that he did so both before and after
his two documented trips to the east. After his second trip he even stopped
in Venice and became a follower of the famous Venetian mystic by the name
of Joanna, who had claimed that she was the incarnation of the spirit of
Christ. His association with Joanna, and maybe his interest in cabalistic
and other mystical material, attracted the attention of the Venetian church
officials who put him in jail for a while before dispatching him to the
Papal custody in Rome. From then on the sources vary, for some claim that
he died in the Roman jail, while others assert that he went back to die
in France in the vicinity of Paris. |
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The question I like to highlight
at this point is: Why was this younger contemporary of Copernicus still
seeking astronomy from the east, and why was he obviously studying it so
diligently at this late date as the annotations clearly demonstrate? All
of this was apparently taking place when we are so often told that the
main thrust of the Renaissance was directed at the recovery of the classical
Greek heritage. It should also be emphasized that, in contrast, the two
Arabic manuscripts that were so heavily annotated, together with the Arabic
astronomical texts that contained the two mathematical theorems under discussion,
and were obviously sought after by Postel and by people like him, all formed
part of a long Islamic tradition whose express purpose was to object to
the same classical Greek heritage. |
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(36)
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The second scientist (or should
one say refugee), the Patriarch (slide 35)
who was mentioned before, had an equally eventful life. We do not know
when he was born, but we know that he was born in the vicinity of the city
of Diyar Bakr, now in south east Turkey, and that he was ordained to the
Patriarchate in 1557.26
We also know from the historical sources that at some point during his
partriarchate he became embroiled with the local Muslim clerics probably
on account of his relationship to the local governor for whom he served
as private physician. Some accounts point to local court intrigues taking
place at this time, while others point to disputes he had with people of
his own church centering around the desirability of affiliating the church
back with the Papal see or not. During that embroilment the local Muslim
clerics threatened his life for they accused him of atheism. In order to
assuage them he apparently converted to Islam, or more like it, made to
convert by the local governor, a deed that forgives one’s previous sins,
according to custom, once the conversion takes place. But that act now
enraged his Christian followers, who demanded that he resigns from the
patriarchate, which he did in 1576, and appointed his nephew to the see.
In 1577, this man escaped from the whole area, probably via Rhodes or Cyprus.
One note (slide 36) at the end of an elementary
mathematical work now kept in manuscript form at the Laurentiana Library,
states that he had just finished reading that elementary mathematical work
as he was being tossed by the waves of the Adriatic sea on his way to Venice.
The actual text of the note reads: "With the aid of the inspiration from
the Mighty Lord we were able to solve these problems on Sunday, after twenty
days of October of the Greek year 1888 [=1577AD] have passed, when I the
lost soul, by the name of Patriarch Ni‘meh, was on the ship tossed by the
waves of the sea on my way to Venice." |
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From Venice, and in the company
of Paolo Orsini, a converted Turk, as his interpreter, the two went down
to Rome, where the Patriarch declared his conversion back to Christianity,
and was embraced by the Catholic church for he promised that he would bring
his Syrian Jacobite church back under the fold of the Papal see. |
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The prodigal son was then well received,
and ended up being given a stipend by Pope Gregory XIII 27
and obviously made acquaintance with the future duke of Tuscany, the cardinal
Ferdinand de Medici. As Ferdinand was interested in setting up the Medici
Oriental Press,28
he appointed him to the board of that press, on a condition that he donated
his library, which he must have brought along with him from Diyar Bakr.29
That library, most of which is still preserved at the Laurentiana, apparently
formed the nucleus for the library of the Medici Oriental Press itself.30 |
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As for the role of this press, it
should be remembered that it produced some of the earliest books ever printed
in Arabic. The purpose of that enterprise is commonly taken to have been
directly relevant to the need of having Arabic religious books in order
to curry favor with the eastern Christians still living in the Islamic
lands or to use such books for missionary activities in the same lands.
In other words, those Arabic books were supposed to assist in the activity
of religious conversions from Islam to Christianity, and their market was
naturally in the east. But as we shall soon see there is enough evidence
to suggest otherwise, namely, that the press was aiming mainly at the European
market and at the scientific community in particular as potential customers. |
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In the deal with the Medici Press,
just mentioned, we saw that the patriarch was allowed the continuous use
of his library, and was appointed to the editorial board of the Press.
From that position he must have had a great say in what was published and
what was not. By reviewing the records of that press one is astonished
to learn that out of the first six books that were produced, four of them
had to do with linguistic or demonstrative science rather than religious
material.31
Even more astonishing is the fact that the press made original print runs
of 1500 copies of the Bible in Arabic, and 3000 copies of Euclid’s Elements,
not of the original Arabic translations of the Greek Elements (which
existed in at least two versions) but of a hybrid version of the much later
recension of the Elements that was produced by the same Nasir al-Din
al-Tusi who was also responsible for the production of one of the two mathematical
theorems under discussion (slide 37). One
can legitimately ask why that specific recension was chosen and the relationship
of that to the will to recapture the texts of classical Greek antiquity.
From the records of the unsold copies from the same Medici Press, one can
surmise that the Arabic Bible sold some 934 copies, while Tusi’s recension
of Euclid’s Elements sold a little better with 1033 copies. Based
on sheer numbers alone could one draw the ironic conclusion that Euclid’s
Elements,
even in their reformulated recension, were deemed to be better tools for
conversion to Christianity than the Bible? |
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Arabic linguistic treatises, and
such late recensions of Arabic scientific texts were obviously abundantly
available in manuscript form all over the Islamic world. Any cursory visit
to any reasonable collection in the current Muslim lands would attest to
that, despite the neglect that such collections faced during centuries
of colonial times. In addition, such linguistic and scientific texts make
very poor Christian propaganda material for missionary purposes. The press
could not possibly hope to make a profit under such conditions. The more
likely market, and there is much evidence to support that, was indeed the
European market itself where it was then thought that there was much science
to be learned from the lands of Islam, and the key to it was a good grounding
in Arabic the lingua franca of that science. The actual purpose
of the Medici press in producing such books, and the veracity of the claim
that they were producing Christian propaganda material needs to be investigated
in some detail and in a different context. |
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Suffice it to say here that the
patriarch was apparently very learned, and his participation in the two
most important committees of his time apparently bore fruits. In his capacity
as overseer of the publication of Avicenna’s medical Canon, he used
his own copy that he brought along with him from Diyar Bakr for the project.
On that count, he at least must be partially credited for the success of
the project since the Canon seems to have also sold slightly better
than the Arabic Bible. And judging by the number of prints the Canon
went through in both its Latin translation as well as its Arabic original,
and by the attempt made by Zacharias Rosenbach (c. 1614) to introduce an
Arabic language course for medical students at Herborn academy, presumably
to read the Canon in the original, the evidence testifies very clearly
to the well-deserved popularity of this book.32
The fact that there were so many Arabic copies of it sold (some 940 according
to the records of the Medici Press) must mean that there were several European
physicians who could read Arabic to benefit from it. There was little hope
that it could be sold in the east, where it originated, and still existed
in several manuscripts. Moreover, in the east it had already been superceded
by more sophisticated commentaries, only one of which was that of Ibn al-Nafis
which went much beyond the Canon as was hinted before. The question
of its European market can also be partially answered by referring to its
status for the educated European of the time, a status that is best summed
up by Postel’s own words when he said: "Avicenna says more on one or two
pages than does Galen in five or six large volumes."33
So much for the Renaissance appreciation of the classical authors. |
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The second committee on which the
Patriarch seems to have served equally successfully was none other than
the famous committee that was set up by Pope Gregory XIII which finally
produced the calendar reform and the on-going Gregorian reckoning in 1582.34 |
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But he was also involved in several
other projects of the press, as he was also involved in correspondence
and collaboration with other "orientalists" both in Italy and well north
of the Alps. In sum, this Patriarch and others like him, such as Leo Africanus,
Orsini just mentioned, and many others were all involved in the production
of what came to be known as Renaissance science. Where does the work of
such men end and the autonomous work of Renaissance science begin? |
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Endnotes |
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21.
There are several biographies of Postel. One such accessible and good biographical
study of him was completed by Georges Weill, as a thesis at the Faculté
des Lettres of the École Normale in 1892, and was translated from
Latin and updated by François Secret, under the title Vie et
caractère de Guillaume Postel, Archè, Milano, 1987. More
recent biography was completed by Marion Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet
of the Restitution of All Things, His Life and Thought, Martinus Nijhoff
Publishers, Hague, 1981.
22.
The information on this Patriarch derives from several sources, most important
among them is a note written by Yuhanna ‘Azzô, the secretary of the
Antiochian Syriac Patriarchate. This biographical note was used as an introduction
to ‘Azzô’s Arabic translation of the Syriac autobiographical letter
that was sent by patriarch Ignatius Ni‘meh to his parishioners in Diyar
Bakr (probably from Rome towards the end of the sixteenth century). See
Yuhanna ‘Azzô, "Risalat al-batriyark Ighnatius Ni‘meh," al-Mashriq,
vol 31 (1933) pp. 613-623, 730-737, 831-838. A less reliable biographical
note was added by Louis Cheikho, in a previous issue of the same journal
to his article "al-ta’ifa al-maruniya wal-ruhbaniya al-yasu‘iya fi al-qarnain
al-sadis ‘ashar wa-l-sabi‘ ‘ashar," al-Mashriq, vol. 19 (1921),
p. 139.
23.
All the following information is derived from the biographies listed in
note 21 above.
24.
For the details on this manuscript, see Giorgio Levi della Vida, Ricerche
sulla formazione del più antico fondo deu manoscritti orientali
della biblioteca Vaticana, Studi e Testi, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
Citta del Vaticano, 1939, pp. 307, et passim (This reference was
brought to my attention by my colleague Giorgio Vercellin of Venice. His
help is gratefully acknowledged).
25.
This manuscript was brought to my attention by my friend Dr. Maroun Aouad
of the CNRS, Paris. His help is greatly appreciated.
26.
All of the following information comes from the biography of ‘Azzô
cited in note 22.
27.
This information is derived from Jones, John Robert, Learning Arabic
in Renaissance Europe (1505-1624), Ph.D. dissertation, London University,
1988, p. 42.
28.
The latest work I am aware of on this press containing also references
to earlier works is in Robert Jones, "The Medici Oriental Press (Rome 1584-1614)
and the Impact of its Arabic Publications on Northern Europe," in The
‘Arabick’ Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England,
ed. G.A. Russell, Brill, Leiden, 1994, pp. 88-108. More information on
this press and the role played by Ignatius Ni‘meh, can be found in G. J.
Toomer, Eastern Wisdome and Learning, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1996.
29.
See Jones, Learning Arabic, p. 43, where he says, that Ignatius
Ni‘matallah, participated in the Medici Press. He gave his collection of
manuscripts to the Press and in return he received 25 scude per month and
access to his books for the rest of his life. He sat on the editorial board
of the press, especially that which oversaw the publication of Avicenna’s
Canon.
He was the most learned collaborator of Raimondi, the actual director and
later owner of the press.
30.
Jones, Learning Arabic, p. 43.
31.
Jones, "The Medici Oriental Press", p. 100, and 108, n.71.
32.
See Ursula Weisser, "Avicenna: Influence on medical studies in the West,"
in Encyclopedia Iranica, vol. III, pp. 107-110, esp. 109, col. 2.
33.
H. Dannenfeldt, "The Renaissance Humanists and the Knowledge of Arabic,"
Studies
in the Renaissance, vol 2 (1955) 96-117, esp. p. 111.
34.
See, for example Jones,
Learning Arabic, p. 42, where he says: Ignatius
"Ni‘matallah brought more than political influence to Europe. He was educated
in the lingua franca of the Middle East, Arabic, and he was familiar with
the medicine, mathematics and astronomy of the region. Joseph Scaliger
referred appreciatively several times in his great Chronology, De EmendationeTemporum
to a learned correspondence he had entered into with Ni‘matallah; and the
Pope appointed him to the commission for calendrical reform."
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