The Islamic Golden Age: The Myth of Lost Knowledge

It has been claimed that European scholars lost nearly all the Greek and Latin protoscientific, mathematical, and philosophical texts after the fall of the Roman empire. Alison Abbott, Senior European Correspondent for the scientific journal Nature claims that by the fifteenth century “Many Arabic works had by then been translated into Latin, but the sources themselves were neglected”. This has become entrenched in pop history.In reality, the Greek sources of those Arabic translations were not neglected. Most of the Greek knowledge which has been preserved was maintained independently of the Muslim world. Even without the help of the Muslim scholars who curated, studied, critiqued, and developed the Greek knowledge tradition, the modern knowledge of Greek mathematics and science would be virtually the same as it is now