Carriers
99 people with names
Knowledge does not flow. Someone carries it. This is the register of everyone the atlas can name, in rough order of birth.
Carriers 67
The translators, revisers, editors and scholars who moved the books. The working half of the atlas.
- Porphyry c. 234–305 Plotinus' student and editor. 1 crossing
- Sergius of Reshaina d. 536 Chief physician of Reshaina in Mesopotamia, trained in Alexandria under Ammonius, and the first great translator of Greek medicine into Syriac. 1 crossing
- Burzoy fl. mid-6th century, court of Khosrow I Physician to Khosrow I Anushirvan. 1 crossing
- Bud the periodeutes fl. c. 570 An itinerant supervising cleric of the Church of the East, a rank above priest and below bishop, who made the Old Syriac Kalilag and Damnag from Burzoy's Persian. 1 crossing
- Athanasius of Balad d. 687 Syriac Orthodox patriarch trained at the monastery of Qenneshre on the Euphrates, the powerhouse of Greek learning in the early Islamic Middle East. 1 crossing
- Ibn al-Muqaffa c. 720–757 Persian convert to Islam, state secretary, and the founder of Arabic literary prose. 1 crossing
- al-Fazari fl. 770s, Baghdad Astronomer at al-Mansur's court who, with Yaqub ibn Tariq, turned the Sanskrit astronomy brought by an Indian embassy into the Arabic Zij al-Sindhind. 1 crossing
- Yaqub ibn Tariq fl. 770s, Baghdad Al-Fazari's collaborator on the Arabic Sindhind, said to have worked directly with the visiting Indian astronomer on the parameters. 1 crossing
- Timothy I c. 740–823 Patriarch of the Church of the East from 780, resident in Baghdad and at ease at the caliph's court. 1 crossing
- Abu Nuh al-Anbari fl. c. 780, Baghdad Christian secretary to the governor of Mosul and Timothy I's collaborator on the Arabic Topics. 1 crossing
- al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf ibn Matar fl. 786-833, Baghdad The first known Arabic translator of Euclid's Elements and one of the first of the Almagest. 3 crossings
- Ibn Na'ima al-Himsi fl. early 9th century, Baghdad Translator from Homs in al-Kindi's circle. 1 crossing
- al-Kindi c. 801–870 The first philosopher of the Arabs, tutor to the Abbasid prince Ahmad ibn al-Mu'tasim, and impresario of a translation circle that put Greek metaphysics into Arabic. 1 crossing
- Hubaysh ibn al-Hasan fl. later 9th century, Baghdad Hunayn's nephew and one of the main hands of his school. 1 crossing
- Istifan ibn Basil fl. mid-9th century, Baghdad Translator of Dioscorides into Arabic in Hunayn's circle. 1 crossing
- Hunayn ibn Ishaq c. 808–873 The greatest of the Baghdad translators: an Arab Christian of the Church of the East, born in al-Hira, who catalogued 129 works of Galen and translated about a hundred of them into Syriac or Arabic himself. 4 crossings
- Ustath early 9th century Translator of al-Kindi's circle, a generation before the Hunayn workshop. 1 crossing
- Thabit ibn Qurra 836–901 Mathematician from Harran, a pagan Sabian in a city of star worshippers, recruited to Baghdad by the Banu Musa. 2 crossings
- Ishaq ibn Hunayn d. c. 910 Hunayn's son and the philosophical specialist of the family workshop. 4 crossings
- Nicholas the monk fl. 951-961, Cordoba A Greek monk sent from Constantinople after the caliph of Cordoba admitted that nobody in al-Andalus could read the illustrated Dioscorides the emperor had sent. 1 crossing
- Hasdai ibn Shaprut c. 915–970 Jewish physician, diplomat and de facto foreign minister to Abd al-Rahman III, and head of Iberia's Jewish community. 1 crossing
- Ibn Juljul c. 944–994 Cordoban physician and historian of medicine. 1 crossing
- Maslama al-Majriti d. c. 1007 The leading astronomer of Umayyad Cordoba, from Madrid when Madrid was a frontier town. 1 crossing
- Ibn al-Saffar d. 1035 Maslama al-Majriti's pupil and collaborator on the Cordoba revision of al-Khwarizmi's tables. 1 crossing
- Constantine the African d. c. 1098 A merchant or scholar from Ifriqiya, probably a Muslim convert to Christianity, who became a monk at Monte Cassino around 1077 and spent two decades turning Arabic medicine into Latin. 1 crossing
- Rabbi Joel fl. 12th century The Hebrew translator of Kalila wa-Dimna, known only because John of Capua says he worked from Rabbi Joel's version. 1 crossing
- Adelard of Bath c. 1080–1152 England's first Arabist, who traveled the Norman Mediterranean for seven years and came home urging readers to follow reason rather than authority. 2 crossings
- Robert of Chester fl. 1140s, Spain The Englishman who finished the first Latin translation of al-Khwarizmi's algebra at Segovia in 1145. 1 crossing
- Gerard of Cremona c. 1114–1187 The most prolific translator of the Middle Ages. 4 crossings
- Dominicus Gundissalinus fl. 1162-1181, Toledo Archdeacon at Toledo and the philosophical specialist among its translators, usually working in tandem with Arabic-speaking collaborators. 1 crossing
- Ibn Rushd 1126–1198 Judge of Cordoba and Seville, court physician to the Almohads, and the most thorough commentator Aristotle ever had. 1 crossing
- Michael Scot c. 1175–1236 Scottish scholar and court astrologer, in Toledo by 1217, then Bologna, the papal curia, and from about 1227 the court of Frederick II. 1 crossing
- Magister Iohannes d. 1215 Toledan master, later dean of the cathedral, who collaborated with Gundissalinus on translations from Arabic. 1 crossing
- Robert Grosseteste c. 1175–1253 Bishop of Lincoln and one of the first Western scholars to retranslate Aristotle from the Greek rather than through Arabic, completing the first full Latin Ethics around 1246-47. 1 crossing
- Campanus of Novara c. 1220–1296 Chaplain to popes and mathematician. 1 crossing
- John of Capua fl. 1263-1278, Rome A Jewish convert to Christianity who translated the Hebrew Kalila into Latin as the Directorium humanae vitae, the version through which the fables entered most European vernaculars. 1 crossing
- Nathan ha-Me'ati fl. 1279-1283, Rome Hebrew translator in Rome, called the prince of translators by later tradition. 1 crossing
- Zerahyah ben Isaac Hen fl. 1277-1291, Rome Barcelona-born Hebrew translator working in Rome. 1 crossing
- Giovanni Boccaccio 1313–1375 Author of the Decameron and host of the project: he lodged Pilatus, procured the Greek, and pressed the work on, with Petrarch cheering from Milan. 2 crossings
- Leontius Pilatus d. c. 1366 Calabrian Greek scholar whom Boccaccio housed in Florence so that Homer could be turned into Latin, the first complete crossing of the epics into a Western tongue in the medieval West. 2 crossings
- Lorenzo Valla 1407–1457 The humanist who proved the Donation of Constantine a forgery and gave the papal court its Latin Thucydides and Herodotus. 2 crossings
- Marsilio Ficino 1433–1499 The Medici's Platonist, who turned the whole of Plato into Latin and saw it printed in Florence in 1484. 1 crossing
- Adolf Rusch c. 1435–1489 Strasbourg printer usually credited with the first printed edition of the Latin Canon of Medicine, around 1473. 1 crossing
- Erhard Ratdolt c. 1442–1528 Augsburg printer working in Venice who solved the problem nobody had solved in twenty-five years of printing: how to set geometric diagrams in type. 1 crossing
- Giovanni Battista Raimondi c. 1536–1614 Director of the Medici Oriental Press in Rome, which cut Arabic type good enough to print the Canon in its own language in 1593, mostly for export back to the lands that wrote it. 1 crossing
- George Chapman c. 1559–1634 Elizabethan playwright whose Homer, finished in 1616, was the first complete one in English. 2 crossings
- Thomas Hobbes 1588–1679 Translated Thucydides directly from the Greek in 1629, he said, so that England might read what democracy does in wartime, then spent the rest of his life on that theme. 1 crossing
- Edward Pococke the elder 1604–1691 England's first professor of Arabic, at Oxford from 1636. 1 crossing
- John Dryden 1631–1700 Poet laureate whose subscription Virgil of 1697 set the model Pope would follow with Homer. 1 crossing
- Johannes Bouwmeester 1634–1680 Amsterdam physician, close friend of Spinoza and co-founder of the literary society Nil Volentibus Arduum. 1 crossing
- George Keith c. 1638–1716 Quaker preacher who Englished the Philosophus Autodidactus in 1674, three years after the Latin appeared. 1 crossing
- Edward Pococke the younger 1648–1727 Translated Ibn Tufayl into Latin at twenty-three, as Philosophus Autodidactus, in the bilingual Oxford edition of 1671 that he produced with his father. 1 crossing
- Thomas Creech 1659–1700 Oxford fellow whose 1682 verse Lucretius was the first complete one in English. 1 crossing
- Simon Ockley 1678–1720 Cambridge Arabist, professor of Arabic from 1711, chronically poor and partly writing from debtors' prison. 1 crossing
- Alexander Pope 1688–1744 His subscription Iliad made translation pay like almost nothing in English publishing had before; the Odyssey that followed quietly employed two collaborators. 2 crossings
- William Jones 1746–1794 Judge of the Calcutta supreme court and founder of the Asiatic Society, who learned Sanskrit from Bengal's pandits and died the year his Manu appeared. 1 crossing
- Henry Dale 1840s Victorian schoolmaster-translator whose literal Thucydides for Bohn's Classical Library is the English carried in this library. 1 crossing
- Benjamin Jowett 1817–1893 Master of Balliol whose Plato became the anglophone default for a hundred years. 1 crossing
- Samuel Butler 1835–1902 Novelist of Erewhon who put both epics into plain prose at the century's end, convinced the Odyssey was written by a woman. 2 crossings
- Georg Buhler 1837–1898 Vienna Sanskritist whose Laws of Manu in the Sacred Books of the East replaced Jones as the scholarly standard. 1 crossing
- Theodore C. Williams 1854–1925 Boston minister and schoolmaster; his verse Aeneid is the English carried in this library. 1 crossing
- A. D. Godley 1856–1925 Oxford classicist and comic poet; his Loeb Herodotus is the English carried in this library. 1 crossing
- Paul Shorey 1857–1934 Chicago Platonist; his Loeb Republic is the English carried in this library. 1 crossing
- Harris Rackham 1868–1944 Cambridge classicist; his Loeb Ethics is the English carried in this library. 1 crossing
- William Ellery Leonard 1876–1944 Wisconsin poet-professor; his verse De Rerum Natura is the English carried in this library. 1 crossing
- David M. Hart 1990s-2020s Historian of the French classical liberals, long-time director of Liberty Fund's Online Library of Liberty, whose Digital Library of Liberty and Power keeps the Censeur circle's books scanned, cataloged and findable. 2 crossings
- Adnan Abbasi 2020s Founder of Thothica, the studio behind this library and atlas. 4 crossings
Authors 23
The people the books started with.
- Herodotus c. 484 BCE–425 BCE Historian of Halicarnassus, the inquiry made prose. 1 work
- Hippocrates c. 460 BCE–370 BCE Physician of Cos and the name under which Greek medicine's founding texts travel. 1 work
- Thucydides c. 460 BCE–400 BCE Athenian general, exiled mid-war, who wrote the war he lost as a possession for all time. 1 work
- Plato c. 428 BCE–348 BCE Athenian philosopher. 1 work
- Aristotle 384 BCE–322 BCE Philosopher of Stagira and teacher at the Lyceum in Athens. 3 works
- Lucretius c. 99 BCE–55 BCE Roman Epicurean poet. 1 work
- Virgil 70 BCE–19 BCE Rome's national poet. 1 work
- Ptolemy c. 100–170 Alexandrian astronomer whose Mathematike Syntaxis became, through its Arabic name, the Almagest. 1 work
- Galen c. 129–216 Physician of Pergamon who wrote most of his vast corpus in Rome as doctor to emperors. 1 work
- Plotinus c. 204–270 The founder of Neoplatonism, who taught in Rome and wrote the treatises his student Porphyry arranged as the Enneads. 1 work
- Brahmagupta c. 598–668 Astronomer and mathematician of Bhillamala in western India. 1 work
- al-Khwarizmi c. 780–850 Mathematician and astronomer in al-Ma'mun's Baghdad. 1 work · 1 crossing
- Ibn Sina c. 980–1037 Philosopher and physician of Bukhara, Jurjan, Rayy, Hamadan and Isfahan, usually while employed as a court vizier. 1 work
- al-Ghazali 1058–1111 Jurist, theologian and Sufi of Tus and Baghdad, the most influential critic of the Aristotelian philosophers in Islam. 1 work
- Ibn Tufayl c. 1110–1185 Physician and vizier to the Almohad caliph Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, and Ibn Rushd's patron at court. 1 work
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1762–1814 Post-Kantian philosopher. 1 work
- Charles Comte 1782–1837 Co-founder of Le Censeur, prosecuted under the Restoration, son-in-law of Jean-Baptiste Say. 1 work
- Charles Dunoyer 1786–1862 Comte's partner at Le Censeur and theorist of liberty as the condition of all production. 1 work
- Mirza Ghalib 1797–1869 The great ghazal poet of late Mughal Delhi, who watched the world that read him burn in 1857 and kept writing letters about it. 1 work
- Euclid fl. c. 300 BCE, Alexandria Compiler of the Elements, the most copied mathematical text in history. 1 work
- Dioscorides fl. mid-1st century CE Greek army physician from Anazarbus in Cilicia. 1 work
- Homer 8th century BCE The name the Greek tradition attached to the Iliad and Odyssey. 2 works
- Manu traditional The traditional name over the Manusmriti, as Bidpai stands over the fables: an attribution, not a biography. 1 work
Patrons 9
The people who paid. Caliphs, viziers, kings and princes whose commissions set chains moving.
- Khosrow I Anushirvan d. 579 Sasanian king of kings, reigned 531-579, remembered in Persian tradition as the just king and collector of the world's wisdom. 1 crossing
- al-Mansur c. 714–775 Second Abbasid caliph, founder of Baghdad, and the ruler whose court received the Indian embassy of the early 770s. 1 crossing
- al-Mahdi c. 744–785 Third Abbasid caliph. 1 crossing
- Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki d. 805 Barmakid vizier to Harun al-Rashid and one of the earliest great patrons of translation, commissioning the first Arabic Euclid and promoting the first Arabic Almagest before his family's spectacular fall. 1 crossing
- al-Ma'mun 786–833 Seventh Abbasid caliph and the translation movement's most famous patron. 2 crossings
- Ahmad ibn al-Mu'tasim fl. 833-842, Baghdad Abbasid prince, son of the caliph al-Mu'tasim and al-Kindi's student, dedicatee of the Theology of Aristotle. 1 crossing
- Abd al-Rahman III 891–961 First Umayyad caliph of Cordoba, reigned 912-961. 1 crossing
- Alfonso X of Castile 1221–1284 King of Castile from 1252 and patron of a court translation industry that moved Arabic learning into Castilian rather than Latin. 1 crossing
- Pope Nicholas V 1397–1455 The founding patron of the Vatican Library, who paid humanists to bring the Greek historians into Latin. 2 crossings