It was Adelard who scoured the libraries of Antioch and Damascus and brought back copies of algorithmic tables that formed the foundation for the study of mathematics in the Christian world. Travelling round this region was to have one’s eyes opened. When he returned home, he ‘found the princes barbarous, the bishops bibulous, judges bribable, patrons unreliable, clients sycophants, promisers liars, friends envious and almost everybody full of ambition’. 42 These views were formed from the sanguine recognition of the east’s sophistication compared to the cultural limitations in the Christian
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