The Critique Theory of “The Incompatibility of the Translation Movement from Beit- al -Hikmah” in the Book of “Greek Thought and Arabic Culture” by Dimitri Gutas

Mahlooji, Kamran; Abdoli, Mahsima

The Critique Theory of “The Incompatibility of the Translation Movement from Beit- al -Hikmah” in the Book of “Greek Thought and Arabic Culture” by Dimitri Gutas

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Kamran Mahlooji ¹

Mahsima Abdoli ²^{, 3}

¹ Department of History of History of Medicine, School of Persian Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

² Research Institute for Islamic and Complementary Medicine, School of Traditional Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

³ Traditional Medicine and History of Medical Sciences Research Center, Department of History of Medical Sciences, School of Traditional Iranian Medicine, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran

Abstract

The study of the impact of Beit Al-Hakma on the translation movement, is one of the most recent challenges faced by scholars in the history of the golden age of Islam. This challenge was first introduced in Iran with the translation of Dmitry Gutas’s book, “Greek Thought, Arabic Culture”, which published in 1998. The book denied the existence of a scientific center in the golden era of Islamic civilization, in which it deliberately directed the selection and translation of texts. He denies the existence of Bait al-Hikmah with the liberal democracy in American culture and the assumptions in which all the influential developments are influenced by the masses of people and the government does not play an important role. Gutas express some financial reasons and hardware states, which stimulate to organize a movement in the Islamic lands and led to the translation of texts. But there are many documents that discuss the extraterrestrial tendencies of Gutas’s historiography, and this article illustrate these reasons for rejecting Gutas’s theory.

Keywords

Translation Movement

Beit Al-Hakma

Dimitri Gutas

Abbasid Caliphate

Persian Empire

The golden age of Islam