Account of Scientific Transmission

This passage comes from the introduction that Abraham Ibn Ezra wrote to his Hebrew translation of an Arabic commentary, written by the tenth-century Muslim Ibn al-Muthannā, on a set of astronomical tables by the ninth-century Muslim al-Khwārizmī. In it, Ibn Ezra describes the transfer of Indian astronomy to the Islamic world. Medieval Jewish rationalists, trying to validate their engagement with “secular” studies like philosophy, sometimes claimed that Jewish sages were the original source of Greek scientific wisdom. Ibn Ezra’s own scientific works played a critical role in the transfer of Arabic knowledge to Latin Europe, and many of his Hebrew texts were translated into Latin.