Some Greek texts reached the West after Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Many others, however, traveled clockwise around the Mediterranean, first translated into Arabic and then into Latin, allowing them to circulate widely.
Many Eastern Christians settled first in Edessa (modern-day Şanlıurfa), home to a school of Christian theology, and then in Nisibis (modern-day Nusaybin), in what is now southeastern Turkey, where prestigious schools of philosophy were established.
When Emperor Justinian closed the Academy of Athens in 529, many scholars fled to the Sasanian Persian Empire, taking part of their libraries with them. Many settled in Gundishapur, in Khuzestan, a province in what is now southwestern Iran. Syriac, a variety of Aramaic, was both the language of the Sasanian state and the liturgical language of most Eastern Christians, so a number of works were translated into it.
The House of Wisdom
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After the Muslims defeated the last Sasanian ruler in 651, intellectual pursuits were put on hold. By the end of the 8th century, Abbasid rule was firmly established in Baghdad. The caliphs Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun could then turn their attention to the development of science and literature. Al-Ma'mun founded the House of Wisdom, which brought together scholars whose chief concern was to collect and translate numerous works, generally directly from Greek, though sometimes from Syriac. They included al-Khwarizmi and, later, Thabit ibn Qurra and the Banu Musa brothers (see box).
