Timeline
Every guide, in its time.
Read across eras and regions, then open a guide to see the sources behind its dates. A shared date is a question to investigate, not evidence of contact.
3 of 57 guides in Islamic world & the Middle East
500–1000 CE 1
- 800–1199 CE
Why translate the same book twice?
Hunayn ibn Ishaq: translating Galen into Syriac, Arabic, and beyond.
Abbasid Baghdad, later Béziers · Islamic world & the Middle East · How knowledge travelled
The ninth-century translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq rendered Galen into Syriac and Arabic for different patrons. Learn why those were separate commissions, and how an Arabic version can preserve what Greek lost.
1000–1500 CE 2
- 1235–1291 CE
What can a dated instrument prove?
Two astrolabes: reading an instrument through its museum record.
Jazira and Yemen · Islamic world & the Middle East · Technology & instruments
Compare two thirteenth-century astrolabes, one in London and one in New York, and see how a museum record, a dated inscription, and a surviving treatise support different kinds of claims.
- 1366 CE onward
Does any manuscript by an author prove his theory travelled?
Ibn al-Shatir's Nihayat: which manuscript counts?
Damascus and Oxford · Islamic world & the Middle East · How knowledge travelled
A fourteenth-century Damascus astronomer left a planetary theory that survives in several manuscripts. Learn why a manuscript on his astrolabe is not evidence for his Mercury model.
Keep the habit
Dates are ranges. Read them that way.
Each guide names its period, its place, and the records that support them.
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