A New History of Medieval Science: Ideas, Objects, and Instruments in Europe and Islamdom, 800–1650

I will be working on chapters for a co-authored book, intended for an audience of students, historians of modern science, and lay readers, on medieval Latin, Arabic, and (to a lesser degree) Greek science and medicine in the period between 750 and 1600 CE. My collaborators include Ahmed Ragab and Ardeta Gjikola, and the book is contracted to Princeton University Press. It aims to present an integrated history of the three traditions, treating them as contemporaneous and inter-communicating, rather than sequential, as is usual. The chapters are organized chronologically, and each focuses on a genre of scientific writing, scientific idea, or object of scientific knowledge belonging to a specific time and place. While at the Institute this summer I plan to finish revising chapters 6 and 7, “Atlas” (on the atlas produced by Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Idrīsī for Roger II of Sicily, in mid-twelfth-century Palermo), and “Hospital” (on the Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem) and to continue research and writing on chapter 5, “Astrolabe.”