Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/283

 of his medical works, and Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed." About this time Frederick II. was strongly desirous of introducing the Arabic writers to the knowledge of the West, a matter to which we shall refer again when we come to consider the translation of the Arabic philosophical works into Latin, and so we find him protecting and pensioning Yaqub ben Abba Mari, a son-in-law of Samuel ben Tibbon, at Naples, and this Yaqub employed in preparing a Hebrew translation of Ibn Rushd's commentaries on the Aristotelian Organon.

The thirteenth century A.D. shows us a continuous series of Hebrew scholars either preparing compilations and abridgments or actually translating the full text of the leading Arabic philosophers, and especially of Ibn Rushd. About 1247 Jehuda ben Salomo Cohen, of Toledo, published his Hebrew "Search for Wisdom," an encyclopædia of Aristotelian doctrines mainly based upon the teachings of Ibn Rushd. A little later Shem-Tov b. Yusuf b. Falaquera also reproduced the doctrines of Ibn Rushd in his essays, and later again in the 13th century Gerson b. Salomo compiled "The Door of Heaven," which shows the same influence.

About 1257 Solomon b. Yusuf b. Aiyub, a refugee who had come from Granada to Bèziers, translated the text of Ibn Rushd's commentary on the de coelo and de mundo, and in the latter part of this century complete translations begin to take the place of abridgments and collections of extracts. About