ABSTRACT
The relationship between the Islamic scientific tradition and modern western science forms a crucial link in the exploration of the contemporary Islam and science discourse. Fortunately, the transmission of the Islamic scientific tradition to the West is not as obscure a subject as the transmission of the pre-Islamic traditions to the Islamic tradition. Likewise, the paths leading to the appropriation and transformation of the material received by the West are also more amenable to scrutiny, though many texts have not been studied yet and many questions remain unresolved. However, inquiry into the process of transmission and transformation of the Islamic scientific tradition in Europe can only yield fruitful results if it is studied within the larger historical context in which it took place. In order to understand this larger context, we will start with a brief description of the European scientific tradition in the Middle Ages and then examine the process of transmission of the Islamic scientific tradition and finally explore the ultimate fate of the received material.1
