'The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England' deals with the remarkably widespread interest in Arabic in seventeenth-century England among Biblical scholars and theologians, natural philosophers and Fellows of the Royal Society, and others. It led to the institutionalisation of Arabic studies at Oxford and Cambridge Universities where Arabic chairs were set up, and immense manuscript collections were established and utilised. Fourteen historians examine the extent and sources of this Arabic interest in areas ranging from religion, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, philology, and alchemy to botany. Arabic is shown to have been a significant component of the rise of Protestant intellectual tradition and the evolution of secular scholarship at universities.
Author(s): Gül A. Russell (ed.)
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 47
Publisher: E. J. Brill
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: 332
City: Leiden
Acknowledgements ix
List of Illustrations xi
Introduction: The Seventeenth Century: The Age of 'Arabick' / G. A. Russell 1
I. Background to Arabic Studies in Seventeenth-Century England / P. M. Holt 20
II. The English Interest in the Arabic-Speaking Christians / Alastair Hamilton 30
III. Arabists and Linguists in Seventeenth-Century England / Vivian Salmon 54
IV. Edmund Castell and His 'Lexicon Heptaglotton' (1669) / H. T. Norris 70
V. The Medici Oriental Press (Rome 1584-1614) and the Impact of its Arabic Publications on Northern Europe / Robert Jones 88
VI. Patrons and Professors: The Origins and Motives for the Endowment of University Chairs — in Particular the Laudian Professorship of Arabic / Mordechai Feingold 109
VII. Arabic Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: The Seventeenth-Century Collections / Colin Wakefield 128
VIII. Arabick Learning in the Correspondence of the Royal Society 1660-1677 / M. B. Hall 147
IX. English Orientalists and Mathematical Astronomy / Raymond Mercier 158
X. The Limited Lure of Arabic Mathematics / George Molland 215
XI. The Impact of the 'Philosophus autodidactus': Pocockes, John Locke and the Society of Friends / G. A. Russell 224
XII. English Medical Writers and their Interest in Classical Arabic Medicine in the Seventeenth Century / Andrew Wear 266
XIII. Arabo-Latin Forgeries: The Case of the 'Summa perfectionis' / William Newman 278
XIV. Coronary Flowers and their 'Arabick' Background / John Harvey 297
Index 304
