Cover not available
Part of
Latin Literatures of Medieval and Early Modern Times in Europe and Beyond: A millennium heritage
Edited by Francesco Stella
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXIV] 2024
► pp. 284–295

Chapter 17
Latin literature and the Arabic language

| Universität Konstanz

Pointing to a millennial history of Latin-Arabic entanglement, the article analyses how Latin literature and the Arabic language influenced each other mutually. It explains the preliminaries of literary entanglement and then deals in chronological order with processes of reception, which led to the Arabization or Latinization of literary works, themes, and forms. The Arabic reception of Latin works was channelled by the explicit Christian character of medieval Latin literature, geopolitical shifts, and the increasing relevance of the Romance vernaculars. Latin textual culture, in turn, has benefited more from Arabic than from any other language except Greek. However, processes of reception were much stronger in the field of scholarly works than in the field of literature proper.

Keywords: al-Andalus, Arabic–Latin translation, ecclesiastical literature, Graeco-Arabic science, historiography, Latin–Arabic translation, Latin-Christian expansionism, poetry, Romance languages, scholarly literature
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The preliminaries of literary entanglement
  • Arabic–Latin translation in Umayyad al-Andalus (ninth–eleventh centuries)
  • The Latin-Christian reception of Arabic scholarship (tenth–sixteenth centuries)
  • The Latin-Christian reception of Arabic poetry, prose, and historiography (twelfth–nineteenth centuries)
  • Ecclesiastic translations from Latin to Arabic (fifteenth–ninteenth centuries)
  • Translations of ancient, medieval, and early Modern Latin literature in Arabic academia (twentieth–twenty-first centuries)
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 2 July 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxiv.17kon
References (68)
Abu-Haidar, Jareer A.
2001 Hispano-Arabic Literature and the Early Provençal Lyrics. Richmond: Curzon.Google Scholar
Aillet, Cyrille
2010 Les Mozarabes. Christianisme, islamisation et arabisation en péninsule Ibérique (IXe–XIIe siècle). Madrid: Casa de Velázquez. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aissani, Djamil, and Dominique Valérian
2003 “Mathématiques, commerce et société à Béjaïa (Bugia) au moment du séjour de Leonardo Fibonacci (XIIe-XIIIe siècles).” Bollettino di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche 23 (2): 9–31.Google Scholar
Albert Reyna, Ricardo-Felipe
2012 “La porosidad de las fronteras culturales: el ‘Calila y Dimna’ árabe en la ‘Disciplina clericalis’ latina de Pedro Alfonso, rabino y cristiano aragonés.” In Fronteras en discusión. La Península Ibérica en el siglo XII, ed. by Juan Martos Quesada, Marisa Bueno Sánchez, 103–114. Madrid: Almudayna.Google Scholar
Attar, Samar
2018 Enemies or Lovers? The Influence of Arabic on Medieval Italian Poetry. Córdoba: University of Córdoba Press.Google Scholar
Axhausen, Käte
1974 Die Theorien über den Ursprung der provenzalischen Lyrik. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints.Google Scholar
Bernabé Pons, Luís F.
2010 “Los manuscritos aljamiados como textos islámicos.” In Memoria de los moriscos. Escritos y relatos de una diáspora cultural, ed. by Alfredo Mateos Paramio, 27–44. Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales.Google Scholar
Bodenham, C. H. L.
1982 “Petrarch and the Poetry of the Arabs.” Romanische Forschungen 94 (2–3): 167–178.Google Scholar
Boggess, William F.
1968 “Hermannus Alemannus’ Latin Anthology of Arabic Poetry.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 88 (4): 657–670. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brockelmann, Carl
1997 “Kalīla wa-Dimna.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam 2, vol. 4, 503–506. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Burnett, Charles
1997 “Petrarch and Averroes: An Episode in the History of Poetics.” In The Medieval Mind. Hispanic Studies in Honour of Alan Deyermond, ed. by Ian MacPherson and Ralph Penny, 49–56. Rochester: Tamesis Press.Google Scholar
2000 “Antioch as a Link between Arabic and Latin Culture in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” In Occident et Proche-Orient: contacts scientifiques au temps des croisades, ed. by Anne Tihon et al., 1–78. Turnhout: Brepols. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 “Translation from Arabic to Latin in the Middle Ages.” In Übersetzung: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Übersetzungsforschung, ed. by Harald Kittel, vol. II/2, 1220–1231. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Derenbourg, Jacques
(ed.) 1889 Johannes de Capua. Directorium vitae humanae. Paris: Émile Bouillon.Google Scholar
Ducène, Jean-Charles
2009 “Al-Bakri et les étymologies d’Isidore de Séville,” Journal Asiatique 297 (2): 379–397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erpenius, Thomas
1636 Locmani sapientis fabulae et selecta quaedam arabum adagia cum interpretatione latina et notis. Leiden: Ioannis Maire.Google Scholar
Fleischer, Henricus Orthobius
(ed./trans.) 1831 Abulfedae historia anteislamica arabice e duobus codicibus bibliothecae regiae Parisiensis. Leipzig: Vogel.Google Scholar
Forster, Regula
2006 Das Geheimnis der Geheimnisse. Die arabischen und deutschen Fassungen des pseudo-aristotelischen Sirr al-asrār / Secretum secretorum. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
Gibson, Margaret
1987 “Adelard of Bath.” In Adelard of Bath. An English Scientist and Arabist of the Early Twelfth Century, ed. by Charles Burnett, 7–16. London: Warburg Institute.Google Scholar
Gil, Ioannes
(ed.) 1973 Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum, vol. 1. Madrid: CSIC.Google Scholar
Gorton, Ted J.
1976 “Arabic Words and Refrains in Provençal and Portuguese Poetry.” Medium Ævum 45 (3): 257–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graf, Georg
1944 Geschichte der christlich-arabischen Literatur, vol. 1. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica VaticanaGoogle Scholar
Grebner, Gundula and Johannes Fried
(eds) 2008 Kulturtransfer und Hofgesellschaft im Mittelalter. Wissenskultur am sizilianischen und kastilischen Hof im 13. Jh. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grévin, Benoît
2019 “Comparing Medieval ‘Latin’ and ‘Arabic’ Textual Cultures from a Structural Perspective.” In Latin and Arabic. Entangled Histories, ed. by Daniel G. König, 3–29. Heidelberg: HeiUP.Google Scholar
Gutas, Dimitri
1998 Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries). New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harvey, Leonhard Patrick
1977 “The Alfonsine School of Translators: Translations from Arabic into Castilian Produced under the Patronage of Alfonso the Wise of Castile (1221–1252–1284).” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1: 109–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hasse, Dag Nikolaus
2016 Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jacquart, Danielle
1989 “Arabisants du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance: Jérôme Ramusio (m. 1486) correcteur de Gérard de Crémone (m. 1187).” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 147: 399–415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Knauf, Ernst-Axel
2011 “Arabo-Aramaic and ʿArabiyya: From Ancient Arabic to Early Standard Arabic, 200 CE–600 CE.” In The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth, Nikolai Sinai, Michael Marx, 197–254. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
König, Daniel G.
2015 Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West. Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2016 “The Unkempt Heritage: On the Role of Latin in the Arabic-Islamic Sphere,” Arabica 63 (5): 419–493. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019a “Herrschaftsübernahme durch Multilingualismus. Die Sprachen der arabisch-islamischen Expansion nach Westen.” Historische Zeitschrift 308 (3): 637–674. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019b “Latin-Arabic Entanglement: A Short History,” In Latin and Arabic: Entangled Histories, ed. by Daniel G. König, 31–121. Heidelberg: HeiUP.Google Scholar
Kreutz, Barbara M.
1996 Before the Normans. Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Kritzeck, James
1964 Peter the Venerable and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Littmann, Enno
1986 “Alf Layla wa-layla.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam 2, vol. 1, 358–364. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Loop, Jan
2013 Johann Heinrich Hottinger: Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “Arabic Poetry as Teaching Material in Early Modern Grammars and Textbooks.” In The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Jan Loop, Alastair Hamilton, and Charles Burnett, 230–251. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mallette, Karla
2021 Lives of the Great Languages. Arabic and Latin in the Medieval Mediterranean. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martínez Gázquez, José
2016 The Attitude of the Medieval Latin Translators Towards the Arabic Sciences. Florence: SISMEL.Google Scholar
Menocal, María Rosa
1981 “Close Encounters in Medieval Provence: Spain’s Role in the Birth of Troubadour Poetry”, Hispanic Review 49 (1): 43–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1987 The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Minervini, Laura
1996 “La Lingua franca mediterranea. Plurilinguismo, mistilinguismo, pidginizzazione sulle coste del Mediterraneo tra tardo medioevo e prima età moderna,” Medioevo romanzo 20 (2): 231–301.Google Scholar
Monferrer Sala, Juan Pedro
2006 “Manuscritos árabes en España.” In Los manuscritos árabes en España y Marruecos. Homenaje de Granada y Fez à Ibn Jaldún, ed. by María Jesús Viguera Molins, C. Castillo, 193–209. Granada: Fundación del Legado Andalusi.Google Scholar
Moukarzel, Joseph
2007 Gabriel ibn al-Qilāʿī (m. ca. 1516). Approche biographique et étude du corpus. Kaslik: Université catholique de Kaslik.Google Scholar
2015 “Jibrāyil Ibn al-Qilāʿī.” In Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, Volume 7: Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America (1500–1600), ed. by David Thomas, 551–552. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Penelas, Mayte
(ed.) 2001 Kitāb Hurūšiyūš (traducción árabe de las historiae adversus paganos de Orosius). Madrid: CSIC.Google Scholar
Petrus, Alfonsi
1911 Disciplina clericalis. Das älteste Novellenbuch des Mittelalters, ed. by Alfons Hilka, Werner Söderhjelm. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Pococke, Edward
(trans.) 1658 Eutychius patriarcha Alexandriae. Annales, 2 vols. Oxford: Humphrey Robinson.Google Scholar
(trans.) 1660 Hugo Grotius. Kitāb fī ṣiḥḥat al-šarīʿa l-masīḥiyya nuqila min al-lāṭīnī ilā l-ʿarabī [De veritate religionis Christianae]. Oxford: no publisher.Google Scholar
(trans.) 1663 Gregorius Abulpharagius. Historia compendiosa dynastiarum. Oxford: Davis.Google Scholar
Puntoni, Vittorio
1889 Quattro recensioni della versione greca del Kitāb Kalīlah wa-Dimna. Rome: Libreria di Ermanno Loescher.Google Scholar
Schippers, Arie
2005 “Hispano-Arabic Literature and the Early Romance Literature.” In Études de Langues et de littératures médiévales offertes à Peter T. Ricketts, ed. by Ann Buckley, Dominique Billy, vol. 1, 71–78. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar
2015 “Arabic and Hebrew Love Poetry in Sicily in the Middle Ages and their Contacts with Early Romance and German Poets in Sicily: Suffering of Love in Sicilian Poetry,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 10: 87–102.Google Scholar
Schultens, Albertus
1740 Consessus Hariri quartus, quintus & sextus. E codice manuscripto latine conversi ac notis illustrati. Leiden: Johann Luzac.Google Scholar
Sudhoff, Karl
1914 “Die kurze ‘Vita’ und das Verzeichnis der Arbeiten Gerhards von Cremona, von seinen Schülern und Studiengenossen kurz nach dem Tode des Meisters (1187) in Toledo verfasst.” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 8 (2–3): 73–82Google Scholar
Thorndike, Lynn
1975 University Records and Life in the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Tolan, John
2003 “Petrus Alfonsi.” In Medieval Jewish Civilization. An Encyclopedia, ed. Norman Roth, 496–497. New York: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Toomer, Gerald J.
1996 Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Twells, Leonard
(ed.) 1740 The Theological Works of the Learned Dr. Pocock, Sometime Professor of the Hebrew and Arabick Tongues, in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ-Church, containing His Porta Mosis, And English Commentaries on Hosea, Joel, Micah, and Malachi. To which is prefixed An Account of his Life and writings, never before printed, vol. 1. London: R. Gosling.Google Scholar
Uhlig, Marion, and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens
2014 D’Orient en Occident: les recueils de fables enchâssées avant les Mille et une Nuits de Galland (Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, Roman des Sept Sages). Turnhout: Brepols. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Urvoy, Marie-Thérèse
1994 Le Psautier mozarabe de Ḥafṣ le Goth. Toulouse: Presses universitaires.Google Scholar
Veit, Raphaela
2003 “Quellenkundliches zu Leben und Werk von Constantinus Africanus.” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 59: 121–152Google Scholar
Whitesell, Frederick R.
1947 “Fables in Mediaeval Exempla.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 46 (4): 348–366.Google Scholar
Wieruszowski, Helene
1966 The Medieval University. Masters, Students, Learning. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand.Google Scholar
Ziolkowski, Jan M.
(ed.) 2015 Dante and Islam. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Zuccato, Marco
2005 “Gerbert of Aurillac and a Tenth-Century Jewish Channel for the Transmission of Arabic Science to the West.” Speculum 80: 742–763. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwartjes, Otto
1997 Love Songs from al-Andalus. History, Structure and Meaning of the Kharja. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar