George Saliba

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George Saliba has been Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, New York, United States, since 1979.

George Saliba received a master of science degree in Semitic languages and a doctorate in Islamic sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a recipient of a number of awards and honors, including the History of Science Prize given by the Third World Academy of Science in 1993, and the History of Astronomy Prize in 1996 from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science.

In his website he writes about himself: "I study the development of scientific ideas from late antiquity till early modern times, with a special focus on the various planetary theories that were developed within the Islamic civilization and the impact of such theories on early European astronomy."

Saliba has been doing research about possible transfer of mathematical and astronomical knowledge from Islamic world to Europe during 15-16th centuries.

In a documentary Columbia Unbecoming he, together with some other Columbia professors, including Joseph Massad, was accused of presenting anti-Israel viewpoints in their classes and stifling the dissenting opinions.^[1] Saliba rejected the accusation and published a rebuttal in Columbia Spectator (November 3, 2004) to that effect.^[2] It was also alleged that he told a student with green eyes that those with green eyes are not racial "Semites", and have no valid national claim to middle-eastern lands.^[3]. Saliba says that this fabricated claim was also rebutted in the Spectator article mentioned above.^[2]

[edit] Bibliography

Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, MIT Press, 2007
"A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam", New York, University Press; (1994) ISBN 0-8147-7962-X (hardcover); (reissue edition: November 1995) ISBN 0-8147-8023-7 (paperback)
(With Linda Komaroff, Catherine Hess) "The Arts of Fire : Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance", Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum (June 10, 2004), ISBN 0-89236-757-1 (hardcover)
"The Crisis of the Abbasid Caliphate" (Tabari, Ta'rikh Al-Rusul Wa'l-Muluk; annotated translation), State University of New York Press (November 1985) ISBN 0-87395-883-7 (Hardcover), ISBN 0-7914-0627-X (paperback)
"The Astronomical Work of Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urdi (d. 1266): A Thirteenth Century Reform of Ptolemaic Astronomy", Markaz dirasat al-Wahda al-'Arabiya, Beirut, 1990, 1995
(With Sharon Gibbs) "Planispheric astrolabes from the National Museum of American History", Smithsonian Institution Press, (1984) ISBN 0-608-11955-5 (paperback)