Estudios de Historia de España (Feb 2017)
Dioscórides rescatado por los andalusíes
Abstract
Official history affirms that the West directly inherited the cultural legacy of Greece and Rome. But if most of the Greek and Latin manuscripts they were destroyed at the sacking of the Library of Alexandria in 391, the archives of Rome were devastated in several occasions between 410 and 476 by Visigoths and Heruls, and the little classic vestiges that were in Athens were devastated by Justinian I in 529, which was the connection that managed to transmit that Literature and could be taken advantage of it in a period previous to the Renaissance? The salvation of the literary masterpieces was made during eight hundred years of active and responsible task of compilation by the Arabs during the line of time that oscillates between 6504450 in that were rescued, translated and relayed towards the four cardinal points. The Arab scientists, like Archimedes or Heron, never separated of the empirical knowledge, on the contrary, they deepened it. The Arab scientific movement not only interpreted the knowledge of the old ones but it developed the new science where the reason sustained the faith and vice versa. This was the essential base that allowed to construct to the Renaissance and the Illustration, 'that made possible Modernity as well. In this context, it was of capital importance the translation to the Arab of the work of Dioscorides since it was not only very useful for the pharmacology and medicine in the Muslim world but that through this one the recipes of the Greek physician of Nero turned back to Latin Europe where were received like a panacea.
