Islam Guidance

COPTIC SCHOLARS OF EGYPT

Macedonian General, Ptolemy I, had become Pharaoh, with a court that spoke Greek. He established a museum and a library in Alexandria. During the reign of the first two Ptolemies, the two institutions proved to be of great help in spreading knowledge, but even before they were burnt and destroyed by the Romans, they had ceased to serve any useful purpose. When the Arabs conquered Egypt, the country was under total darkness. There was no lamp and no light that could have illuminated the Muslim world. H.G. Wells has described the state of affairs in Alexandria, after the first two Ptolemies, in the following words:
“For a generation or so during the reigns of Ptolemy I, and Ptolemy II, there was such a blaze of knowledge and discovery at Alexandria as the world was not to see again until the sixteenth century A.D. but it did not continue. The Museum produced little good work after the first century of activity.”
“So it was this blaze of intellectual enterprise never reached beyond a small circle of people in touch with the philosophers collected by the first two Ptolemies.
It was like the light in a dark lantern, which is shut off from the world at large. Within, the blaze may be blindingly bright, but nevertheless, it is unseen. Presently a darkness of bigotry fell upon Alexandria. Thereafter, for a thousand years of darkness, the seed that Aristotle had sown lay hidden. Then it stirred and began to germinate.”
The name of the Christian, Jewish, Sabean, and Zoroastrian scholars, who made contributions to the intellectual awakening and progress of the Arabs after the conquest of Syria, Iran and Iraq, are recorded in history. Many of them had become converts to Islam.
However, we do not find the name of a single Coptic scholar in the list of these luminaries. Learned members of the Committee, who researched the life of Imam Ja’far as-Sadiq (a.s.), did not and could not mention a single Coptic scholar who might have come to Medina to educate the Muslims.
If there were any Coptic scholars in Egypt they would have gone to Baghdad, which was nearer to Alexandria and was the seat of the government, where they could have gained favor of the caliph, won fame, and made a fortune. They would not have made a long and arduous trek to Medina to give lessons to the Imams (a.s.) in astronomy, geography, physics and chemistry with no hope of recovering their expenses. Moreover, by doing so they would have definitely incurred the wrath of the people in power who were hostile to the Imams (a.s.).
There was also the language problem. It would have been very difficult for Coptic scholars to translate into Arabic what they had learnt in Greek, when there were no equivalent scientific and technical terms in Arabic. Even up to the time of Ma’mun, who was giving gold equal to the weight of Greek books, which were translated into Arabic, there were few scholars in the Muslim world, who could do the job, take that rich reward, earn fame and get a lucrative post in the Translation Bureau of the Caliph.
Since there were no scholars who were proficient in Greek as well as in Arabic languages, most of the Greek works were first translated into Syriac, an old language of Syria, by the scholars, who knew Greek as well as Syriac. Then they were translated from Syriac into Arabic by young Syriac knowing scholars who had also studied Arabic. The difficult passages in the original were translated word for word. Where no Arabic equivalent was known, the Greek terms were simply transliterated with some adaptations.

Imam Reza (AS) Network

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