Ex Oriente lux. Translating Words, Scripts and Styles in Medieval Mediterranean Society: (Arabica Veritas, vol. II)

Ex Oriente lux – the Sun rises in the East and pours its light over the world; and the result, in Latin usage, is ‘lumen’ – the luminescence that the whole area lit by the lux is suffused with. Most of the papers in this volume were first presented at the conference Ex Oriente lux – The Transfer of Scientific Knowledge from the Near East to Europe, held at the University of Cordoba in 2015 and organised jointly by the Cordoba Near Eastern Research Unit (CNERU) and the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe (CHASE) at the Warburg Institute. Both centres are devoted to showing how Europe was ‘lit up’ from the Orient (ex Oriente lux), and the conference was the first of a series devoted to the interests and character of the Spanish scholar John of Seville and Limia (fl. 1120s-53), who translated numerous astrological/astronomical, philosophical and medical works into Castilian from Arabic. Review: by Jules Janssens, forthcoming in the Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies.