Toledo and Alexandria, Beacons of HumanityAfter the fall of the Roman empire, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages. That Europe, divided into domains, sunk into ignorance and cut itself off from the knowledge of the great achievements of the peoples of antiquity.
The knowledge acquired by Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt. Persia and India, synthesised into what today we call the Hellenistic culture, was preserved in Byzantium and, formerly, in Alexandria, Pergamo and Antiochia.
These centres of knowledge, before the final downfall, managed to transmit their legacy to other places and cultures. In the course of the centuries, through a succession of accidents, their discoveries gradually reached Europe, where they revolutionised medicine, mathematics, the arts and thought in general. The Renaissance was approaching, preceded by phenomena of cultural recovery in Sicily, Naples, Tarazona and Toledo.
The Arabs, in the course of their expansion, which commenced in the 7th century, made contact with different cultures such as the Persian and especially with the Byzantine Empire, where they connected with the Greek classical culture that had been preserved there.
They studied and translated the classics and continued the research of the Hellenistic culture, as well as creating new productions. This cultural compilation of Islam reached the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 8th century by way of the Omayas dynasty.
The caliphate at Cordova is replaced by smaller kingdoms of Taifas. In the year 1050 Toledo is one of the most important of them, and it is ruled by the caliph Al-Ma´mum.
This is a man who wishes to imitate his namesake Al-Ma´mum, from Bagdad, who lived during the 9th century and was the legendary protector of the sciences and the arts.
King Al-Ma´mum of Toledo surrounded himself with every scientist and scholar he could gather and fostered the most advanced library of the period. It was partly formed by volumes from the great library at Cordova, which was famous under the protection of the Omayas.
When in 1085 Toledo capitulated before Alphonse VI, the Christians were astonished by the beauty and the culture of the Arab city. Thus, for example, were they astounded by books on medicine, such as that by Avicene, where illnesses are diagnosed and treatments indicated, something unknown to them.
During the reign of Alphonse VI, Toledo becomes the European capital of culture and there begins a pilgrimage of scholars from all over the Continent, attracted by the books treasured in that city. They expect to take back to their court, monastery or university of origin copies and translations of the works at the Toledo library. These scholars, together with the Jewish and Mozarab translators who worked there, formed a group and developed a body of work that inspired the name of the Toledo School of Translators (Amable Jourdain in the XIXth, although there never existed such a place as a physical entity or concrete institution=Subdirector ETT).
The true initiators of the translation work were Pedro Alfonso, also called Mose Sephardi, and Abraham ibn Ezra. This work enjoyed a great vogue during the first half of the 12th century with the arrival of the man who would become the Archbishop of Toledo, Raimundo de Sauvetat. During this period, Arab studies are developed and the bibliographic archives are open to scholars, especially clerical ones.
In the city, there lived together since Visigoth times Arabs, Christians and an educated Jewish community, enlarged in the latter years by scholars arriving from Cordova and Seville who, getting away from the religious strictness of the Almohads, found refuge in Toledo, where they offered their knowledge of the Arab and Romance languages to the monks and the foreign savants.
At this time, in order to translate some work, a Jew or a Mozarab reads the text and puts it into Romance; then a Latinist translates it into Latin.
In this manner, capital works were transferred from one language to another, from one culture to another. For example, in philosophy, the texts of Aristotle commentators such as Avicene and Averrhoës; in medicine, the works of Hippocrates and Galen; in mathematics, writings by Euclide and Al-Juwarizmi.
Thanks to their work, the names of many of those translators have come down to us: Domingo Gundisalvo and Juan Hispano translated books on astrology, astronomy and medicine while also creating original works. Herman Alemán made translations on the Ethics of Aristotle´s and of works by Averrhoës, as well as the Psaltery. Above all, Gerardo de Cremona, who after learning Arab translated 71 works, among them treaties of Greek mathematics and astronomy, Greek and Arab medicine and also of astrology and philosophy.
In the 13th century, Alphonse X, The Savant, a cultured king in the style of the great Muslim caliphs, becomes a patron of the arts and the sciences and, besides, develops his own original production: a History of Spain, several juridical treatises such as the Partidas, an astronomical treatise, the Alphonsian Tables, in turn based on the Azarquiel Tables. And the famous Cantigas as well.
His reign was a period of intense scientific and literary activity. He established schools of researchers and translators in Murcia, Seville and Toledo who produced works such as Calila e Dimna. The Book of Mohamed Scale, which some belief to be the inspiration for the Divine Comedy, Picatrix and many more. (Subdirector ETT= Calila e Dimna).
During Alphonse X time, the procedure for translating underwent a change. Now translations no longer ended up in Latin but, ordinarily, in a Romance language. This gave a great momentum to the development of the Castillian language. (Subdirector ETT= Castellano).
Alter the death of the savant king, the intensity of the work of translation waned. The most important works had already been translated, copied and distributed, and there were other places where similar work was being performed.
In Naples and Palermo, Emperor Federico II, uncle of Alphonse X, organised centres for the translation of Greek, Arab and Hebrew manuscripts into Latin.
The influence of the so-called Toledo School of Translators has been enormous. Thanks to that work, universities such as the Sorbonne in Paris, and the ones at Bologna and Montpellier, could for the first time incorporate the originals of the classics.
Aristotelian writings served as the basis for Thomas of Aquinas and for the Scholastic.
Avicene´s Canon of Medicine was considered a fundamental text in the European faculties until the 17th century.
Islamic trigonometry, the sexagesimal system, the Astronomical Tables by Al-Juwarizmi and the works sponsored by Alphonse X are the starting point of European astronomy and the source of works by Copernic, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
Arabs brought over to Europe, besides important works, the experimental method and Arabic numerals (different from the Roman numerical system). The whole of these contributions constituted a giant step towards the Renaissance and modern science. ¿Could we imagine our mathematical calculations without the number cero?
In present days, the Toledo School of Translators aspires to break the mental and linguistic barriers between the Arab world and the West. .(Carrobles).The phenomenon of cultural expansion, of interest because of the accompanying human development, has its precedents. Pulling back the thread of history, from Toledo, by way of Cordova and Bagdad, we arrive at the Byzantine Empire and from there at the cultural nucleus par excellence of antiquity: Alexandria.
From the Alexandria of today, with its blue sea and its beautiful streets and piazzas, and its new Library, we recall the history of this legendary city that for several centuries was the indisputable centre of knowledge.
Alexandria bears the name of Alexander the Great, the first great Western emperor.
Alexander was the son of Philip of Macedonia, and he inherited from his father the project to unite the Greek peoples and conquer Persia. Taking it much further, he extended his conquests to India in the Orient and to Egypt in the South.
He was a disciple of Aristotle, and besides being a military and political genius, he was a learned man. He took Greek culture and organisation to all conquered nations while including the customs and beliefs of all of them and fostering racial integration and mix.
Alexander died young, leaving the empire he had conquered and many cities he had founded. From all of them, this one, Alexandria, situated in the western part of the mouth of the Nile, was the most important.
After Alexander´s death, his generals shared out the empire among themselves.
Ptolemy I Soter, school-friend of Alexander and perhaps his half brother, appropriated Egypt, starting a new dynasty of pharaohs that lasted three centuries and ended with the death of Cleopatra and the Roman invasion.
Following Alexander´s inclusive style, Ptolemy tried to fuse Greek culture and religion together with those of Egypt. From the synthesis there arouse, for example, the cult to a new god, Serapis, in whom Osiris and Zeus converged.
Ptolemy selected Alexandria for the capital of his kingdom and decided to make the city the most important of the world in beauty, economy and culture. Its basis was a grid map, with two wide perpendicular streets ornamented with statues and obelisks. Built of masonry, stone and marble, it had underground conducts that carried the water of the Nile to the houses.
In Alexandria he built Alexander´s tomb or Soma, the Basilea or palace quarter, which included a great museum, in the Greek style, with its Library. He joined the island of Pharos to the continent with an embankment --a distance of 1 km— so creating the port that is still considered Egypt´s best and that made of Alexandria the commercial capital of the Mediterranean.
On Pharos he built a huge lighthouse, over 100 metres high, considered in ancient times one of the seven wonders of the world.
The Museum, in imitation of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian temples and of the Athenian Academy, congregated the best scientists, poets and scholars from all over the known world. Invited by the state, they could lead a life free of material worries and dedicated to dialogue, reading and research.
Almost certainly, the inspirer of the Museum was Demetrio de Falero, who was a ruler of Athens and after a political setback exiled himself to Alexandria attracted by Ptolemy I.
The Library of Alexandria received all the books that could be collected throughout the years. To find them, legations were sent to various places, and those that could not be bought were copied. It is even said that ships that arrived at the Alexandrian port were searched and that all books found were seized in order to copy them.
The majority of the works compiled belonged in the Greek classical culture, but books from the Egyptian temples, history books from other peoples, and texts on the Iranian Zoroastrian doctrine as well as Buddhist ones arrived from India were also copied. In order to translate the Bible, 72 Hebrew scholars were called to the city.
It is difficult to know the number of books so collected. Estimates of the specialists vary widely, and they range between 50 and 700 thousand. But it is known that all volumes were classified by subject matter and that each one bore an inscription stating its origin and contents.
There were detailed catalogues, some of them critical, evaluating the quality of the texts and highlighting those of most interest.
Apart from being studied and translated, texts were also polished until the most faithful version of the original had been obtained. Commentaries were added and copies given different uses.
To this extraordinary compilation, another task of the scholars, not less vast, must be added. Century after century, they laboured in Alexandria producing works that would have a great influence in the future.
In mathematics, Euclide, who lived around the year 300 BC, created the system of axioms, the ordering of theorems and the application of rigour in demonstrations. The definition of Euclidian space is still included in present day mathematical texts.
Archimedes studied in Alexandria. He was a great creator of engines that were useful in agriculture, as well as in war. He calculated the volumes and centres of gravity of various bodies, he deducted the value of the number Pi. His works on hydrostatics are well known because of his famous theorem.
Heron was a creator of gears, automata and apparatus using steam power.
Erathostenes, besides being the Director of the Great Library, was a great astronomer, geographer, mathematician and philosopher. He drew a world map with the distances between the most important places and was the first man to measure the perimeter of the Earth.
Claudius Ptolemy crowned Alexandrian research in trigonometry in the second century with his Almagesto. He created a model to explain the evolution of planets and stars that, although erroneous, was kept until Galileo´s time.
Galen created basic works on the art of healing and on anatomy that prevailed until the Renaissance.
There were many other important contributions in the fields of linguistics, grammar, etc. In Alexandria, very high levels of the evolution of knowledge were reached, and it is impressive to see that the idea of the heliocentric theory, the steam engine, the advances in so many areas, were attained then, and that it took more than another one thousand years for them to be retaken and developed further.
With the wane of the Ptolemaic dynasty, Alexandria begun its slow decline. In the middle of the first century BC it was incorporated into the Roman Empire, but its cultural activity continued, although suffering different avatars. Scholars, the Museum and the Library were immersed in various upheavals that had some effect on them, but until the IVth century they continued studying, producing and teaching, now under the auspices of the Roman emperors.
Finally the city, and mainly its Museum and Library, suffered the stroke of religious intolerance and, to this day, it has not been possible to determine the concrete circumstances of its disappearance.
Was it the fire provoked by Caesar during the reign of Cleopatra? Could it have been the successive revolts which later affected the city? Or might it have been due to the rise of Constantinople?
Perhaps we will never know what was destroyed and what could have been saved, but the fact is that many Alexandrian scholars continued their work somewhere else. Probably many copies, perhaps originals of their own works, went to other libraries so reaching the Byzantine Empire, and from there passing onto the Arab and Western worlds, so generating a revolution in Europe and favouring the development of the universities and of modern culture.
With the discovery in Toledo of the Alexandrian texts, European Renaissance begins. Toledo was the main nucleus through which Greek and Arab science was transmitted to the Latin West.
´Between Alexandria and Bagdad, the centre of gravity of a cultural nucleus was formed, arriving from the East at Samarkand and culminating in the West in Toledo.
The process we have followed here shows us how our civilisation arises from the combined effort of many human beings, from different epochs and different peoples. In those places where, out of the love of knowledge, of tolerance and of a broad-minded approach, the exchange between cultures and peoples is made possible, knowledge gains an enormous impulse which extends in distance and time, so favouring the possibility of the evolution of the Human Being. |
CD Faros 
