Gerard of Cremona

Gerard of Cremona was an Italian scholar of the twelfth century who became one of the best known translators of Arabic works into Latin. The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives his dates as about 1114 to 1187 and calls him, together with Domingo Gonzalez, an outstanding leader of the twelfth-century translation work. It says he is credited with translating more than seventy works from Arabic. ^{1 2} The articles read give no account of his life: no place of birth beyond his name, no training, no details of where he worked. They mention only that the movement he belonged to began in Toledo after the town was taken in 1085. ¹

The article on Orientalists describes a group of scholars who devoted themselves to translating from Arabic into Latin for over two centuries. Some came from outside Spain, and Jewish scholars played a role the article compares with that of the Nestorian scholars in the earlier Baghdad translation movement. The texts sought were Greek philosophical, scientific and medical works known in Arabic, and works by Muslim authors such as Ibn Sina, whose writing became known in Europe around 1180. ¹

• Euclid's Elements: the article on Euclid says Gerard's Latin version is one of three twelfth-century Arabic-Latin versions, and that it derives from an Arabic compilation of two traditions. ³ The article on al-Nayrizi says that al-Nayrizi's commentary on the Elements has survived in Arabic for Books I to VI and in Gerard's Latin translation for Books I to X. ⁴ See al-Nayrizi.
• Algebra: after Robert of Chester translated the first part of al-Khwarizmi's algebra in 1145, the article on al-jabr says that Gerard composed a second translation of that part, titled De jebra et almucabala. ²
• Measurement: the Banu Musa treatise on measuring plane and spherical figures remained, the article says, the basic text for Latin science after Gerard translated it in the twelfth century. ⁵ The Banu Musa article mentions another mathematical work translated by him whose Latin text was published in 1883. ⁶ The article on practical geometry (misaha) refers to Abu Bakr's work as translated by Gerard. ⁷
• Statics: a work of Thabit ibn Qurra on the balance was translated into Latin, probably by Gerard, as Liber karastonis, and the article notes that the translator did not grasp one proposition. ⁸

• The Arabic Almagest: the article on the lunar mansions says Gerard rendered the Arabic word al-majarra as almaiarati, and in one place added a gloss. ⁹
• Al-Farghani's astronomical compendium had two Latin translations, one by John of Seville (1135) and one by Gerard. ^{10 11}
• Ibn Mu'adh of Jaen: of the tables of Jaen only the canons survive, in a Latin translation by Gerard. ¹²
• Ibn al-Haytham's treatise on twilight and the rising of clouds appears in Latin as Liber de crepusculis, translated by Gerard. ¹³
• Geomancy: the article on this art says Gerard translated an Arabic geomantic work. ¹⁴

• Of al-Farabi's works, the Survey of the Sciences (Ihsa' al-'ulum) exists in a mediaeval Latin translation by Gerard, edited in Madrid in 1932 with the Arabic text and a Spanish translation. ¹⁵
• Of Aristotle's Meteorology in Arabic, the first three books of the version by Ibn al-Bitriq were translated into Latin by Gerard. ¹⁶
• The revised Arabic version of Book I of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, which Ibn Rushd read, was also translated into Latin by Gerard. ¹⁷
• Al-Razi's medical handbook, the Mansuri, was translated by him in the twelfth century. ¹⁸
• The article on Ibn Sina gives 1497 as the year his Latin translation of the Canon was published. ¹⁹
• A treatise on simple drugs by the physician Ibn Wafid was abridged and translated by Gerard as Liber Albenguefith philosophi de virtutibus medicinarum et ciborum. ²⁰

The sources read say nothing of Gerard's family, where he studied Arabic, the date or place of his death beyond the year given, or how his workshop of translators was organised. The attribution of a work to him is also sometimes qualified in the sources, as with the statics treatise above, where the article writes "probably". Records of the Latin texts themselves are still to be added to the museum.