's
Recueil des traités de médecine translated by Gerard of Cremona, second half of the 13th century. Gerard of Cremona's Latin translation of the Arabic version of Ptolemy's
Almagest made c. 1175 was the most widely known in
Western Europe before the Renaissance. Unbeknownst to Gerard, an earlier translation of the
Almagest had already been made in Sicily from the original Greek c. 1160 under the aegis of
Henricus Aristippus, although this version was not as widely used in the Middle Ages as Gerard's version.
George of Trebizond and then
Johannes Regiomontanus retranslated it from the Greek original in the fifteenth century. The
Almagest formed the basis for Western
astronomy until it was eclipsed by the theories of
Copernicus. Gerard edited for Latin readers the
Tables of Toledo, the most accurate compilation of astronomical data ever seen in Europe at the time. The
Tables were partly the work of
Al-Zarqali, known to the West as
Arzachel, a mathematician and astronomer who flourished in
Cordoba in the eleventh century.
Al-Farabi, the Islamic "second teacher" after
Aristotle, wrote hundreds of treatises. His book on the sciences,
Kitab lhsa al Ulum, discussed classification and fundamental principles of science in a unique and useful manner. Gerard rendered it as
De scientiis (
On the Sciences). Gerard translated
Euclid’s
Geometry and
Alfraganus's
Elements of Astronomy. Gerard also composed original treatises on
algebra,
arithmetic and
astrology. In the astrology text, longitudes are reckoned both from Cremona and Toledo. In total, Gerard of Cremona translated 87 books from the Arabic language, including such originally Greek works as
Ptolemy's
Almagest,
Archimedes'
On the Measurement of the Circle,
Aristotle's
On the Heavens, and
Euclid's
Elements of Geometry; and such originally Arabic works as
al-Khwarizmi's
On Algebra and Almucabala,
Jabir ibn Aflah's
Elementa astronomica, and works by
al-Razi (Rhazes). Gerard of Cremona was also creator of anatomical terms. The Latin translation of the
Calendar of Córdoba, entitled
Liber Anoe, has also been attributed to Gerard. The historian
Edward Grant calls Gerard the "greatest of all western translators" and claims that his translations "would have alone drastically altered the course of western science" even if no other translators had been active. ==A second Gerard Cremonensis==