The most dedicated and most important, however, was Gerard of Cremona. Until his death in 1187, he translated no fewer than eighty-seven books from the Arabic, including Ptolemy and Euclid, and a precious hoard of texts by Aristotle. These included the Posterior Analytics, which completed the West’s knowledge of Aristotle’s works on logic.* Gerard also turned out Latin versions of Aristotle’s pathbreaking scientific treatises, not only On the Heavens but the Physics, On Generation and Corruption, and Meteorology, as well as Arab commentaries on the Metaphysics and On the Soul—the key texts of
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