During those centuries and beyond, ancient Greek culture was absorbed by another people: the Arabs. In the seventh century, Muhammad (c. 570-632), a merchant from Arabia (now Saudi Arabia) founded a new religion called Islam. Muhammad and his followers set out on wars of religious conquest. Soon the Islamic Arabs dominated the Middle East, North Africa, and part of Spain. Their lands included parts of what had been the old Greek, Persian, and Roman Empires.
Through their expansion, the Arabs and the people they ruled came into contact with the Byzantine Empire. Islamic scholars began to translate works by Aristotle, Plato, and other Greeks into Arabic. The scholars also read Greek texts on medicine, science, and math, and combined what they learned with ideas from Iran and India.
From the 700s through the 1200s, the Arabs battled Western kingdoms that arose from the remains of Rome’s empire The Arabs also clashed with the Byzantine Empire. Yet the despite their conflicts with the descendants of Greece and Rome, the Arabs played a key role in the development of modern Western culture. Latin scholars in Western Europe knew that the Arabs had access to works that had been lost in the West, due to wars and Christian leaders who destroyed “pagan” teachings. Both
Seeking Truth
An early Islamic philosopher, al-Kindi (c. 801-866) expressed the Arabs' enthusiasm for knowledge coming from the Greeks. He wrote (as cited by Albert Hourani in A History of the Arab Peoples),
"We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples." Then, in a sentiment that echoes the values of Socrates and Aristotle, he added, "For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself."
Arabic translations of ancient Greek works and original Arabic studies influenced by the Greeks were eventually translated into Latin. Western scholars finally had a chance to discover the wisdom of ancient Greece.
World History
