Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ALKINDI AND AVICENNA ?

Paradoxically, the Christian Eriugena was a much less important precursor of Western medieval philosophy than a series of Muslim thinkers in the countries that are now Iraq and Iran. Besides being significant philosophers in their own right, these Muslims provided the route through which much Greek learning was made available to the Latin West.  In the fourth century a group of Syrian Christians had made a serious study of Greek philosophy and medicine. Towards the end of the fifth century the Emperor Zeno closed their school as heretical and they moved to Persia. After the Islamic conquest of Persia and Syria, they were taken under the patronage of the enlightened Caliphs of Baghdad in the era of the Arabian Nights. Between 750 and 900 these Syrians translated Aristotle into Arabic, and made available to the Muslim world the scientific and medical works of Euclid, Archimedes, Hippocrates, and Galen. At the same time, mathematical and astronomical works were imported from India and ‘Arabic’ numerals were adopted.