The Arabian Euclid
Heath tells us that "the Caliph al-Mansur (754-775) sent a mission to the Byzantine Emperor as the result of which he obtained from him a copy of Euclid among other Greek books, and again that the Caliph al-Ma'mun (813-833) obtained manuscripts of Euclid, among others, from the Byzantines." Most of the Greek learning that was preserved in the Library at Alexandria must have ended up in Rome before the Christians and Arabs gradually destroyed it. It is reasonable to think that copies of pagan books then made their way from Rome, the capital of the old, western Roman Empire, to Constantinople, the capital of the new, eastern Roman Empire, before Rome was sacked in the 5th Century. Constantinople did not fall until 1203, leaving plenty of time for Greek science to migrate into the Islamic empire. The first Arabic translation that we know of was made by Al-Hajjaj j. b. Yusuf b. Matar (Al-Hajjaj) in the 8th Century. A manuscript copy of this version still ex