Abstract - Teaching and Researching Muslim Science Heritage at Barcelona University
Prof. Emilia Calvo Abstract The research on Arabic-Islamic Science at the University of Barcelona started 79 years ago, in 1931, when Professor José M. Millàs-Vallicrosa published a study on the sources of some Latin texts written in the northeastern region of Spain, known as Catalonia, as early as the tenth century. Millàs demonstrated that these texts where the result of the direct translation of complete texts or the summaries of Arabic mathematical and astronomical texts elaborated in the previous century in the southern part of the Iberian peninsula, which at that time was known as al-Andalus. This study was the starting point of an activity that has not stopped or been interrupted since then. Millàs gave birth to what has come to be known in the last decades as "the Barcelona team", a very active group that has tried to spread the results of its research all over the world, with as many activities as possible at all levels, from the more restricted academic ones to the more wide diffusing media. The aim of my presentation is to give some brief remarks on the most relevant episodes of almost a century devoted to the study of scientific texts written in Arabic and the teaching of the results both to graduate and undergraduate students, and how this activity has contributed to the widening of knowledge of an otherwise badly known part of the history of world civilisation.
by: Prof. Emilia Calvo, Sat 19 June, 2010
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