The concept of tolerance initially advanced by the Arabs in both the East and the Iberian peninsula, an ideal later continued at the time of the Reconquest by Spanish Christians, was the key to the transmission of Greek science to the West. This paper examines the far-reaching and peculiar ways in which both Christians and Muslims fostered on Spanish soil a thriving intellectual life in the low Middle Ages. Particular attention is given to the rich personality and precociously modern achievements of King Alfonso X, with his vast project of cultural empowerment on behalf of his subjects.

A novel written by a Muslim Andalusian of the 12th century brilliantly argues that all knowledge can be obtained by applying reason to experience.

The Jews of Spain in the Middle Ages played an important role in the transmission of Graeco-Arabic learning by translating, or participating in translations, of scientific texts. They also composed original works on mathematics, astronomy, astrology and medicine in which they adapted the theories of the ancients for their own time. Science was used by the ruling powers as an element of prestige, and by the Jewish scientists as a way to obtain a high social status. The policy of cultural sponsorship of Muslim caliphs, as well as of Christian kings, was fundamental in the process of transmission of the Greek sciences to the Western world. The School of Translators of Toledo is an example of this process. The astronomical theories developed by Jewish scientists at the end of the 15th century played an important role in the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries of the 16th century. Their knowledge of astronomy, astrology, mathematics, and medicine was also used by the Jewish intellectuals to provide a rational and scientific support for the Jewish religion and tradition, as is reflected in the interpretations of the Bible by medieval Spanish Jewish authors.

This paper deals with the transfer of Arab visual theory in the Middle Ages, as it is believed that the cultural significance of this transfer needs a new emphasis. Mathematical perspective was invented in Florentine Renaissance Art. However, except in the history of science, it is a little known fact that this visual theory was based on the Book of Optics, written by Ibn al Haithan, also known as Alhazen, and was translated, probably in Spain, with the Latin title Perspectiva. We therefore can speak of a double history of perspective, as visual theory and as pictorial theory. The main argument is to identify the importance of images, which separate Arab thought from Western thinking. It was the transformation of mathematics into art, in the Western sense, that allows us to distinguish two different cultures. In this process, the invention of mathematical space by Biagio Pelacani was an important step. Thereafter, the gaze and its looking space became a new concern of the Renaissance.

Sugar has attracted attention from economic historians, particularly because of its significance in the organisation of labour – notably the role of sugar in the development of slavery in the New World. In a Mediterranean setting, the links to slavery are less obvious, but the gradual westward transfer of sugar technology from the Levant to Sicily (under Muslim rule, and later under Aragonese rule) and to Spain reflects seismic changes in the Mediterranean economy. This was a luxury product and, as demand in western Europe grew, European merchants sought sources of supply closer to home than the eastern Mediterranean. Their reluctance to trade in the Levant reflected political uncertainties in the period when Turkish power was rising in the region. In southern Spain, Valencia (under Christian rule) and Granada (under Muslim rule) became major suppliers to northern Europe by the 15th century. Paradoxically, the survival of the last Muslim state in Spain, Granada, was made possible through the injection of capital by Italian and other merchants trading in sugar. However, the discovery of the Atlantic islands, especially Madeira, gave the Portuguese an opportunity to develop sugar production on a massive scale, again targeting Flanders and northern Europe. The article concludes with the arrival of sugar in the Caribbean, in the wake of Columbus.

This paper summarises the development of pharmacology in the Graeco-Roman world. The number of medicinal plants recorded almost trebled between 400 BC (the Hippocratic writings) and AD 250 as the Greeks and Romans discovered more about the regions beyond the Mediterranean. The transfer of medicinal substances was almost entirely from East to West, and from South to North with Alexandria and, later, Rome as the major entrepôts. Two Greek writers were of great importance because they were translated into Syriac, Arabic, and Latin, among other languages, and set the agenda for subsequent work in pharmacology. The descriptions of medicinal substances by Pedanius Dioscorides (fl. AD 67) created a model that others followed down to the 17th century. Galen theorized about the way in which drugs worked, and his suggestion that one might correlate illnesses and drugs in terms of four degrees of intensity (a suggestion never followed through systematically by Galen himself) led in the Middle Ages to the classification and investigation of drugs in these terms.

From the ninth to the 13th century, numerous works on pharmacology were written in Arabic in Eastern as well as in Western parts of the Islamic world. Starting from Galen and Dioscorides, the Islamic authors greatly improved on the Greek heritage. Among the theories they developed, two major trends stand out. The first trend emphasized medicinal degrees of primary qualities, and thus could lead to the promotion of mathematical rules. The second trend, on the contrary, focused on ‘the whole form’ of the substances, and opened the way to an experimental approach. Both these trends will continue in European pharmacology up to the Modern period.

During the final decade of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, there were moves to harmonize pharmaceutical therapy in a number of areas of the Mediterranean and Central Europe. The most evident consequence was the appearance of books of compilations of simple and compound remedies specially selected from a wide range of earlier pharmacological literature. These compilations were set up as ‘standards’ by the authorities concerned with public health in many states. In theory, apothecaries were obliged to follow these ‘official’ instructions for preparing and dispensing drugs in order to ensure that the medicines prescribed by physicians were correctly made up and safe. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the persistence of Arabic drugs and recipes through the content of three of these handbooks between 1499 and 1618.

In his huge ‘Pharmacognosy’ the universal scholar al-Bīrūnī (973–1048) equates, in 1116 paragraphs, about 4500 names of medicinal plants, and also foodstuffs, in 27 languages. Before the introduction of an internationally recognised botanical nomenclature this kind of literature served a practical need. Al-Bīrūnī’s work is now a mine of information for the linguist and also for world history. It testifies, for example, to the fact that the spoken Greek vernacular of the time had become already quite different from the classical language. Thus, the Byzantine emperors in their efforts to defend their state helped to conserve a cultivation of the humanities, which would have disappeared under Muslim rule. In the article on ‘capers’, al-Bīrūnī also offers a rare insight into a seemingly relaxed bit of small talk between Constantinus VII and an Arab ambassador.

This article presents a brief analysis of the ways in which women’s healthcare was understood by medieval Jews, as well as how this sphere of medical activity was learned, practised and disseminated among western Jewish communities during the Middle Ages. It examines the paths of transmission and reception of theories and notions of female physiology, health and disease within the Hebrew medical corpus, and it analyses the influence of the Arabic and Latin traditions in this process. In connection with the understanding of women’s healthcare, it pays some attention to adornment and decoration of the body, as part of the technology that focused on intervening in the functioning of the body. It also discusses succinctly the process through which medical ideas and concepts, as well as healing practices, were received, and integrated or refused, by Jews.