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Schuldet der Westen dem Islam nichts?

 

Dies behauptet der Historiker Sylvain Gouguenheim von der ENS Lyon in seinem neuen Buch. Er will darin die gängige These widerlegen, dass das Mittelalter erst durch islamische Gelehrte mit dem Erbe der Antike wieder vertraut worden sei. Gouguneheim bestreitet, dass das Erwachen Europas aus dem Mittelalter erst durch die arabischen Gelehrten möglich geworden sei, die das Wissen der Griechen tradiert hätten.
In Frankreich gibt es schon eine kleine Kontroverse um das Buch.

Hier ein Ausschnitt des Artikels von John Vinocur in der heutigen Herald Tribune:
For a controversy, here’s a real one. Gouguenheim, a professor of medieval history at a prestigious university, l’École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, is saying „Whoa!“ to the idea there was an Islamic bridge of civilization to the West. Supposedly, it „would be at the origin of the Middle Ages‘ cultural and scientific reawakening, and (eventually) the Renaissance.“

In a new book, he is basically canceling, or largely writing off, a debt to „the Arabo-Muslim world“ dating from the year 750 – a concept built up by other historians over the past 50 years – that has Europe owing Islam for an essential part of its identity.

„Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel“ (Editions du Seuil), while not contending there is an ongoing clash of civilizations, makes the case that Islam was impermeable to much of Greek thought, that the Arab world’s initial translations of it to Latin were not so much the work of „Islam“ but of Aramaeans and Christian Arabs, and that a wave of translations of Aristotle began at the Mont Saint-Michel monastery in France 50 years before Arab versions of the same texts appeared in Moorish Spain.

Mehr hier.