Lecture on The Reception of Hellenistic Knowledge in Classical Islam
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Within the Alexandria Project, the BA holds a lecture on Wednesday, 20 March 2013, entitled “From Alexandria to Baghdad: The Reception of Hellenistic Knowledge in Classical Islam” by Professor Emeritus Hinrich Biesterfeldt.
With the beginning of the Arab Dynasty of the Abbasids and the foundation of their capital, Baghdad (762 CE), an unprecedented transfer of Hellenistic scholarship from the schools of Alexandria to the court and the cultural elite of Baghdad took place. By the end of the tenth century, almost all scientific and philosophical Greek works that formed the canon of Alexandrian scholarship, including medicine, physics, mathematics, musical theory, astrology, alchemy, and philosophy, had been translated into Arabic. The lecture will explore the motives and roles of the groups participating in this transfer—the translators and the politicians and scholars benefitting from the translations—and trace the legacy of that campaign in Arabic philology and Islamic scholarship.
Biesterfeldt is one of the leading German scholars of Arabic and Islamic studies. He received his PhD in 1970 from the University of Göttingen, and has been working until retirement at the University of Bochum, Germany. He studied Arabic, Persian and Turkish, Islamic history, Philosophy, and Ancient history in Freiburg i. B., Munich, Göttingen, and Yale. He has been a Research Assistant at the Orient–Institute in Beirut, Assistant Professor in Heidelberg, Assistant and Associate Professor at Ruhr University Bochum, and Director of the Arabic Section of the Landesspracheninstitut NRW in Bochum. He is a member of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, and of the American Oriental Society.
The Lecture is held at the BACC Lecture Hall at 2:00 pm and is open for public.
It is given in English, and simultaneous translation into Arabic will be available.