Latin translations from Arabic in Toledo and Spain
A wave of Arabic-to-Latin translations produced in the 12th century in the towns recaptured from the Muslims in Spain, above all in Toledo. After the capture of the city in 1085 the Latin West suddenly gained access to large Arabic libraries, and by mid-century a translating enterprise with a clear programme had taken shape: Gerard of Cremona and Dominicus Gundissalinus divided the fields of knowledge between them, Gerard taking mathematics, astronomy and medicine.
Through these translations key texts of Greek and Arabic learning entered Latin: Ptolemy's Almagest, Euclid's Elements, Galen, Aristotle, Avicenna's Canon. The best Latin version of the Elements, in Britannica's judgement, was made by Gerard from the Ishaq and Thabit Arabic versions, that is from the Baghdad translation. By no later than 1200 Ibn al-Haytham's principal optical treatise, known in Latin as De aspectibus, was also available.
On these translations grew Roger Bacon, Witelo and John Pecham, that is the whole perspectivist optics to which Kepler was still replying half a millennium later. In the judgement of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Gerard's translations made a decisive contribution to the growth of medieval Latin science.
Why this date
approximate and extended. Toledo was taken by Christian powers in 1085, and with the city came libraries full of Arabic manuscripts; Toledo rose as a centre of Arabic to Latin translation in the second half of the 12th century (Burnett, Science in Context 14, 2001, pp. 249ff.). Adelard of Bath made the first surviving Latin translation of the Elements about 1120 from an Arabic copy obtained in Spain. Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114 to 1187) came to Toledo for the Almagest, which was not available in Latin; after his death his pupils drew up a list of seventy one works he had translated, while Britannica gives about eighty and adds that Gerard may have directed a whole school of translators. The axis value is 1150, the middle of this work.
What it grew from
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The Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad
prerequisite for · Confidence: high
In Toledo the translating was done not from Greek but from Arabic: the best Latin version of the Elements was made by Gerard of Cremona from the Ishaq and Thabit Arabic versions, that is directly from the Baghdad translation, and without it there would simply have been nothing in Spain to translate.
Link sources
- «Euclid: Renditions of the Elements», Encyclopaedia Britannica Verified 24 Sep 2026
Incontestably the best Latin translation from Arabic was made by Gerard of Cremona ... from the Ishaq-Thabit versions.
- «Euclid: Renditions of the Elements», Encyclopaedia Britannica Verified 24 Sep 2026
a third by Ishaq ibn Hunayn (died 910)...which was revised by Thabit ibn Qurrah
- «Euclid: Renditions of the Elements», Encyclopaedia Britannica Verified 24 Sep 2026
The first extant Latin translation of the Elements was made about 1120 by Adelard of Bath, who obtained a copy of an Arabic version in Spain, where he traveled while disguised as a Muslim student.
- Lemay R. «Gerard of Cremona», Dictionary of Scientific Biography Verified 20 Sep 2026
the love of the Almagest, which he knew was not available in Latin, that led Gerard to Toledo
- Smith A. M. «Optics to the Time of Kepler», Encyclopedia of the History of Science (ETHOS) (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Emblematic of this power shift was the capture of Toledo in 1085 and with it the sudden acquisition of libraries containing a wealth of Arabic texts
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.
- «Euclid: Renditions of the Elements», Encyclopaedia Britannica Verified 24 Sep 2026
What grew out of it
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The retinal image and the theory of lenses (Ad Vitellionem paralipomena)
influenced · Confidence: medium
Kepler wrote his Supplement to Witelo, that is he was answering the perspectivist tradition of Bacon, Witelo and Pecham, and that tradition grew on the Latin De aspectibus, the translation of Ibn al-Haytham that appeared by no later than 1200 in the Spanish translating milieu opened up by the capture of Toledo.
Dispute: Who translated De aspectibus into Latin is unknown. Smith cautiously allows for Gerard of Cremona's involvement but puts a question mark after his name and speaks of at least two translators; no historian asserts the whole chain, from the Spanish translations to Kepler, in a single sentence: it holds through separate links, each attested on its own. The connection therefore runs not through a named translator but through the Spanish translating milieu and the Latin corpus that came out of it.
Link sources
- Smith A. M. «Optics to the Time of Kepler», Encyclopedia of the History of Science (ETHOS), Carnegie Mellon University Libraries (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026
The opportunity came in the twelfth century as Christian powers gained control of Muslim territory in the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily. Emblematic of this power shift was the capture of Toledo in 1085 and with it the sudden acquisition of libraries containing a wealth of Arabic texts
- Smith A. M. (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Consisting of Roger Bacon (d. 1292), Witelo (d. 1280?), and John Pecham (d. 1292), this group laid the foundations for the science of geometrical optics (Latin perspectiva) in the medieval Latin West.
- Smith A. M. (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026
This, most likely, was the edition of Witelo's Perspectiva to which Kepler was responding in the Paralipomena of 1604.
- Smith A. M. «Alhacen. A Critical Edition», Preface (2001) Verified 5 Oct 2026
By no later than 1200, and perhaps somewhat earlier, this treatise appeared in Latin under the title De aspectibus.
- Smith A. M. (2001) Verified 20 Sep 2026
there were at least two translators at work on the Latin text, one of them (Gerard of Cremona?) hewing as faithfully as possible to the Arabic original
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.
- Smith A. M. «Optics to the Time of Kepler», Encyclopedia of the History of Science (ETHOS), Carnegie Mellon University Libraries (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026
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The university as a guild of masters and students (Paris, Bologna)
influenced · Confidence: high
The new knowledge that reached western Europe in the twelfth century chiefly through the Arab scholars of Spain, according to Haskins, burst the bonds of the cathedral and monastery schools and drew the students who formed in Paris and Bologna the first universities, gilds of masters and scholars.
Link sources
- Haskins C. H. «The Rise of Universities», New York: Henry Holt, 1923, p. 7 (1923), 7 Verified 6 Oct 2026
Between 1100 and 1200, however, there came a great influx of new knowledge into western Europe, partly through Italy and Sicily, but chiefly through the Arab scholars of Spain
- Haskins C. H. «The Rise of Universities», New York: Henry Holt, 1923, p. 8-9 (1923), 8-9 Verified 6 Oct 2026
This new knowledge burst the bonds of the cathedral and monastery schools and created the learned professions; it drew over mountains and across the narrow seas eager youths who, like Chaucer’s Oxford clerk of a later day, ‘would gladly learn and gladly teach,’ to form in Paris and Bologna those academic gilds which have given us our first and our best definition of a university, a society of masters and scholars.
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.
Further reading
Not evidence: these carry no quotation and support nothing we wrote. They are books and scans to read next.
- Haskins C. H. «The Rise of Universities», New York: Henry Holt, 1923, p. 7 (1923), 7 Verified 6 Oct 2026
Node sources
- Burnett C. «The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Program in Toledo in the Twelfth Century», Science in Context 14, no. 1-2, 249-288 (2001), 249-288 Verified 20 Sep 2026
This article reassesses the reasons why Toledo achieved prominence as a center for Arabic-Latin translation in the second half of the twelfth century, and suggests that the two principal translators, Gerard of Cremona and Dominicus Gundissalinus, concentrated on different areas of knowledge.
- Burnett C. (2001) Verified 20 Sep 2026
This article reassesses the reasons why Toledo achieved prominence as a center for Arabic-Latin translation in the second half of the twelfth century, and suggests that the two principal translators, Gerard of Cremona and Dominicus Gundissalinus, concentrated on different areas of knowledge.
- Burnett C. (2001) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Gerard appears to have followed a clear program in the works that he translated.
- Lemay R. «Gerard of Cremona», Dictionary of Scientific Biography Verified 20 Sep 2026
the love of the Almagest, which he knew was not available in Latin, that led Gerard to Toledo
- Lemay R. Verified 20 Sep 2026
a list of seventy-one works translated by Gerard
- Lemay R. Verified 20 Sep 2026
Through their abundance, subject matter, and quality, Gerard's translations made a decisive contribution to the growth of medieval Latin science.
- «Gerard of Cremona», Encyclopaedia Britannica Verified 20 Sep 2026
About 80 translations from the Arabic have been attributed to him, but it has been suggested that he was in charge of a school of translators
- «Euclid: Renditions of the Elements», Encyclopaedia Britannica Verified 24 Sep 2026
The first extant Latin translation of the Elements was made about 1120 by Adelard of Bath, who obtained a copy of an Arabic version in Spain, where he traveled while disguised as a Muslim student.
- Smith A. M. «Optics to the Time of Kepler», Encyclopedia of the History of Science (ETHOS), Carnegie Mellon University Libraries (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Emblematic of this power shift was the capture of Toledo in 1085 and with it the sudden acquisition of libraries containing a wealth of Arabic texts
- Smith A. M. «Alhacen. A Critical Edition», Preface (2001) Verified 5 Oct 2026
By no later than 1200, and perhaps somewhat earlier, this treatise appeared in Latin under the title De aspectibus.
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.