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In spite of differences of religion and language, a single scientific culture can be found throughout the Mediterranean region from at least the period of the Roman Empire until the early modern period. This culture was developed by the Greeks (who themselves owed much to the Egyptians, the Mesopotamian civilisations and the Indians), partly committed to Latin in Antiquity, but more comprehensively translated into Syriac and Arabic from the 7^th century onwards; from the late 10^th century onwards the slender threads of ancient science in Latin began to be woven into the rich fabric of Arabic science, so that, by the mid-13^th century, Latin culture in Europe enjoyed the same level of sophistication as Arabic culture in the Islamic world and relied on the same authorities: the Greek classics of arithmetic (Nicomachus), geometry (Euclid), astronomy (Ptolemy), astrology (again Ptolemy, but also Dorotheus and Vettius Valens), and medicine (Hippocrates and Galen), as well as the Arabic masters in arithmetic, algebra and trigonometry (al-Khwarizmi and Abu Kamil), in astronomy (again al-Khwarizmi, al-Battani, and az-Zarqali), astrology (Abu Ma‘shar and numerous others) and medicine (Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Ishaq al-Isra’ili, Ibn al-Jazzar, az-Zahrawi, and, again, numerous others). Moreover, through the spreading of Islam to Persia, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and beyond, the same scientific culture embraced an area far wider than the Mediterranean basin.

Thus, a work written by an astronomer in Morocco in the 13^th century can be found copied in a manuscript in Hyderabad. A ‘philosopher’ at the court of Frederick II in Sicily, originating from Antioch, was trained in medicine and philosophy in Mosul and Baghdad, and served the Turkish Seljuks of Rum and the Armenian regent before coming to Western Europe. A scholar writing a philosophical work in Greek, also in Sicily in the 13^th century, could use a Latin translation of a commentary on Aristotle by the Arabic Ibn Rushd, etc.



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