FIRED BY THE examples of Adelard of Bath, Stephen of Pisa, and other pioneers of the studia Arabum, adventurous Western scholars soon began to fan out across the former Muslim lands of Spain, Sicily and southern Italy, and the so-called Latin East in pursuit of newly available works of philosophy and the arts and sciences that accompanied them. Christian conquest and, to a far lesser extent, trade began to open up the vast Arab libraries to Western eyes, particularly in Spanish territory once held by the Muslims. Plenty of eager readers stepped forward. Centuries before the region’s final Arab stronghold, the kingdom of Granada, fell to the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, the Latins were busy poring over the invaluable works left behind as the Muslims were forced to withdraw gradually from the Iberian Peninsula. In what amounted to an intellectual gold rush, young scholars hurried into the unknown to uncover Arabic texts and then render them into Latin before someone else could beat them to it.
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