The main trend of transmission of Arabic science to Christian Europe in the Middle Ages took place through translations made in Spain during the 12th and the 13th centuries. In theory the entire Arabic corpus of writings until the 12th century was available, though only a selection of it was actually translated. We may wonder what criteria the translators used to make their selection. In this lecture I will put forward my own hypothesis, which is that of a historian of Andalusian science who is not an expert in the translation period.

The lecture will focus on the following points:

In order to be translated into Latin or Castilian, texts had first to be available. This means that only books which had reached al-Andalus in the 12th century could be translated. An analysis of several standard lists of translations (works by Gerard of Cremona listed by his socii, translations undertaken for king Alfonso X of Castile, Arabic works translated into Hebrew by Jewish translators from  Languedoc and Provence in the 13th and 14th c., etc.) shows that the selection was purely chronological. Eastern Arabic books produced before the end of the 10th century had reached al-Andalus and could be translated. With a few exceptions, such as the work of Ibn Sînâ and Ibn al-Haytham, the later Eastern production never reached the Iberian Peninsula, and was not translated; later Arabic texts, written in the 11th and the 12th centuries, were translated only if they had been written in al-Andalus.

This fact can be explained in the context of the history of Andalusian science and culture. Since the beginning of the 9th c., the emirs and caliphs of Cordova had promoted a policy of orientalisation of Al-Andalus. As part of this policy a large library was created in the royal palace, which reached its summit during the caliphate of al-Hakam II al-Mustansir (r. 961-976). Due to the existence of this library, a good part of the scholarly production of Eastern Islam up to that time was accessible in Cordova. After the fall of the caliphate ca. 1035, however, the policy fell into disuse. None of the kings of the tawâ’if (petty kingdoms) had any great interest in building a similar collection of books, or the economic capacity to do so; the only references we find are to specialised libraries like the one compiled by king al-Mu’taman of Zaragoza (r. 1081-85). The arrival of Eastern books in al-Andalus was interrupted towards the end of the 10th century. From the 11th c. onwards, Andalusian scholars seemed to believe that a student did not need to complete his education by travelling to the great capitals of the East and that the cultural level of al-Andalus was equivalent to that of Baghdad, Damascus or Cairo. Statistics show a major reduction in the number of ‘journeys in search of knowledge’ (rihla fî talab al-þilm) and first rate scholars such as Ibn Hazm, Ibn al-Zarqâlluh, Ibn Rushd or Ibn Zuhr do not seem to have travelled eastwards.

The lack of contact with Eastern culture and science  affected not only the world of translators, but the history of Andalusian science as a whole. The golden half-century of the tawâ’if (ca. 1035-1085) saw a splendid flourishing of science in al-Andalus (mainly in the fields of Astronomy, Mathematics and Agronomy). From this period onwards, Andalusian science would develop on the basis of its own resources. This implied, on the one hand, a certain originality, but, on the other, a steady decline after the 12th century. One of the reasons for this decline was, no doubt, the almost total lack of contact with Eastern Islamic Science, which continued to be creative until, at least, the 15th century.