The Koran in the Middle Ages

The Koran

(J. M. Rodwell translation; London: J.M. Dent; 1953), p. ix.

‘The Koran enjoys the distinction of having been the starting-point of a new literacy and philosophical movement which has powerfully affected the finest and most cultivated minds among both Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages.

This general progress of the Muhammedan world has somehow been arrested, but research has shown that what European scholars knew of Greek philosophy, of mathematics, astronomy, and like sciences, for several centuries before the Renaissance, was, roughly speaking, all derived from Latin treatises ultimately based on Arabic originals; and it was the Koran which, though indirectly, gave the first impetus to these studies among the Arabs and their allies.

Linguistic investigations, poetry, and other branches of literature, also made their appearance soon after or simultaneously with the publication of the Koran; and the literary movement thus initiated has resulted in some of the finest products of genius and learning.’

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