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The opening page of a 13th-century Latin manuscript of Ptolemy's Almagest, with an enthroned Ptolemy in a gold and blue initial
Almagest, Latin manuscript, Paris, 13th c. · BnF Latin 16200, f. 1 · Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF · Public domain (cropped)

InvestigationHistory11 min

What happens to an idea when it changes language?

Follow one astronomy book from Greek to Arabic to Latin — and discover that translators corrected, criticised and expanded what they carried.

Exhibit 01
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Exhibit 01

One book, three languages

Around 150 CE in Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemy wrote a vast work of mathematical astronomy in Greek. In 9th-century Baghdad it was translated into Arabic — more than once. Arabic readers called it al-Majisṭī, "the greatest". In 1175 in Toledo, Gerard of Cremona translated the Arabic into Latin as the Almagest.

The English name of the book is an Arabic word with a Greek root.

Question

When a book is translated, what do you think usually happens to it?

Sources in this experience

  • Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbāsid Society — Dimitri Gutas, 1998, Routledge
  • Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance — George Saliba, 2007, MIT Press View source
  • The Beginnings of Western Science (2nd ed.) — David C. Lindberg, 2007, University of Chicago Press View source
  • Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq on his Galen Translations — Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, ed. & trans. John C. Lamoreaux, 2016, Brigham Young University Press View source
  • al-Shukūk ʿalā Baṭlamyūs (Doubts concerning Ptolemy) — Ibn al-Haytham, 11th century
  • Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages — Charles Burnett, 2009, Ashgate Variorum View source
  • Almagest, Latin manuscript, Paris, 13th century (BnF Latin 16200, f. 1) — Almagest Master, 13th century, Source: gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France · Public domain via Wikimedia Commons View source
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