Medieval Christian apologists explained Arab scientific achievement as stolen Latin learning

Evidence

Muhammad is not the only adversary of Saint Isidore. Lucas’s hero is the intellectual superior of the most illustrious of the Muslim sages, Avicenna (Ibn Sînâ). After glorifying Isidore’s piety and learning, Lucas explains that his successor, a shifty Greek named Teodistus, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” stole several manuscripts of Isidore’s as-yet-unknown works in medicine and other sciences, then “out of hatred of the Faith, excising the truth and inserting errors, had them translated from Latin into Arabic by a certain Arab named Avicenna,” who pretended the works were his own. … Faced with the impressive edifice of Arabic science, Lucas responds that the Arabs stole it all from the good Isidore. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 940

Categorization

• DEFINE: Exemplifies the medieval ‘translatio studii’ argument that Arabic learning was derivative of Christian antiquity.
• XREF: Connects to the general pattern of cultural appropriation narratives found in later European Orientalism and colonial discourse. — connects to: Renan explained away Muslim scientific achievement by attributing it to Persians and Greeks
• SHARE: The specific claim that Avicenna merely plagiarized Isidore is a wild and specific medieval polemic worth sharing with a medievalist.