Greek, Roman, and Arabic books on philosophy and mathematics. These books included the classics of Rome and Greece, lost to the west for hundreds of years. The intellectual plunder lead to scholars from all over Europe to come to Toledo. Using Jewish interpreters, the scholars translated the Arabic books, and these works left lasting jealousies on the scholars of Europe. The texts included medicine, astrology, astronomy, pharmacology, psychology, physics, physiology, zoology, biology, botany, mineralogy, optics, chemistry, mathematics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, music, meteorology, geography, mechanics, hydrostasis, navigation, and history. These transcripts helped to light the fire of the renaissance.

These books included the classics of Rome and Greece, lost to the west for hundreds of years.

Karnal wrote on Sep 18^th, 2014 at 2:07pm:

That's an enduring furphy.

Brian Ross wrote on Sep 18^th, 2014 at 7:21pm:

because of the Muslim invasion and subjugation of of the Eastern Roman Empire, cutting the Greek east off from the Latin West.

The translation of the classical Greek heritage into Latin and into Western vernaculars really took off when in 1453 Byzantium fell and the refugees to the West took the books they could rescue with them. This is when Greek literature was beginning to appear - the Arabs had no interest in Greek literature or poetry and had none of it translated by the conquered Jews and Christians who did the vast majority of the translations for them.

Arabic scholars, however, had already translated Greek texts, and applied them to Islamic philosophy:

Quote:

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http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H011

And blah blah blah. We could go on. We will.

Carry on camping, that's the old boy's motto.

[So no translation by Muslims Arabs, only by non-Muslims. Arabs did the commenting on the translated texts and financed the translations. They did not themselves translate because they did not know Greek and Syriac well enough.

However, the shining star of al-Ma'mun's reign was the Nestorian Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. ah 264/ad 873), who hailed from al-Hirah in Iraq and, jointly with his son Ishaq (d. ah 299/ad 911), his nephew Hubaysh and other associates, placed the translation of Greek medieval and philosophical texts on a sound scientific footing. The chief interests of Hunayn himself were medical, and we owe to him the translation of the complete medical corpus of Hippocrates and Galen, but Hunayn and his associates were also responsible for translating Galen's treatises on logic, his Ethics (the Greek original of which is lost) and his epitomes of Plato's Sophist, Parmenides, Cratylus, Euthydemus, Timaeus, Statesman, Republic and Laws. (Only the epitomes of the Timaeus and the Laws have survived in Arabic.)

The interest of Hunayn and his school in Galen, the outstanding Alexandrian physician and Platonist, is noteworthy and this philosopher-physician is a major figure in the history of the transmission of Greek learning into Arabic. Not only his sixteen books on medicine but a series of his logical and ethical writings were translated and played an important role in the development of Arabic thought. Apart from the epitomes of Plato's Dialogues already mentioned, his Pinax (list of his own writings), That the Virtuous can Profit from Knowing Their Enemies, That One Should Know His Own Faults and especially his Ethics have influenced moral philosophers from Abu Bakr al-Razi to Ibn Miskawayh and beyond.

Of the works of Aristotle, Hunayn's son Ishaq is responsible for translating the Categories, De interpretatione, On Generation and Corruption, the Physics, On the Soul, the Nicomachean Ethics and the spurious De Plantis, written by the Peripatetic philosopher Nicolaus of Damascus (first century bc). By far the most important Aristotelian treatise to be translated into Arabic during this period is the Metaphysics, known in the Arabic sources as the Book of Letters or the Theologica (al-Ilahiyat). According to reliable authorities, a little-known translator named Astat (Eustathius) translated the twelve books (excluding M and N) for al-Kindi, as did Yahya ibn 'Adi a century later. However, Ishaq, Abu Bishr Matta and others are also credited with translating some parts of the Metaphysics.

Equally important is the translation by Ibn Na'imah al-Himsi (d. ah 220/ad 835) of a treatise allegedly written by Aristotle and referred to in the Arabic sources at Uthulugia or Theologia Aristotelis. This treatise, which consists of a paraphrase of Plotinus' Enneads IV-VI, made by an anonymous Greek author (who could very well be Porphyry of Tyre), together with Proclus' Elements of Theology (known as the Pure Good or Liber de causis), thoroughly conditioned the whole development of Arab-Islamic Neoplatonism (see Neoplatonism in Islamic philosophy). Al-Kindi is said to have commented on the Theologia Aristotelis as did Ibn Sina and others, and al-Farabi refers to it as an undoubted work of Aristotle. A series of other pseudo-Aristotelian works also found their way into Arabic, including the already mentioned Secret of Secrets, De Plantis, Economica and the Book of Minerals.

Among other translators of Greek philosophical texts, we should mention Qusta ibn Luqa (d. ah 300/ad 912), Abu 'Uthman al-Dimashqi (d. ah 298/ad 910), Ibn Zur'ah (d. ah 398/ad 1008) and Ibn al-Khammar (d. ah 408/ad 1017), as well as the already-mentioned Abu Bishr Matta (d. ah 328/ad 940) and his disciple Yahya Ibn 'Adi. None of those translators made any significant or original contribution to Arabic philosophical literature, although they laid the groundwork for subsequent developments and served as the chief purveyors of Greek philosophy and science into the Islamic world. However, there were noteworthy exceptions: Abu Bishr Matta was a skilled logician, and the Jacobite Yahya ibn 'Adi stands out as the best-known writer on Christian theological questions and on ethics in Arabic. The Harranean Thabit ibn Qurra (d. ah 289/ad 901) was an outstanding mathematician and astronomer as well as a translator.