Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianaga, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history.

We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the

Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were.

And how we got here. I want you to imagine the dusty road from Tunis to Salerno, sometime in the 11th century.

A weary traveler is making his way towards Europe, carrying not silks, not gold, but books.

His name is Constantine the African, a merchant-turned scholar who has spent years in the libraries of North Africa, immersed in the medical wisdom of the Islamic world.

When he arrives at the medical school of Salerno, he has brought with him Arabic manuscripts

on pharmacology, surgery, and the theory of disease. Works by Avicenna and Al-Razi.

For the first time, European students can begin to learn medicine not just from Galen or Hippocrates,

but through the lens of Islamic science, preserved, expanded, and translated by Muslim scholars.

It is a turning point. The Mediterranean here is a bridge,

not a boundary. One generation later, another restless mind is following the same path.

Alderate of Bath, an English scholar with a taste for travel, crosses into Spain and southern Italy to study Arabic. He will later confess, I learn from my Arab teachers, and

return to England with treasures. Euselid's elements, works on astronomy, and instruments for observation.

He will introduce not just text, but methods, reasoning, experimentation, calculation, that will

reshape how Europeans approach science. To Al-Drad, Arabic learning isn't foreign. It's a revelation,

a window into a deeper intellectual tradition. And then, into the early 13th century, along

comes Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonacci.

Unlike Constantine or Aldred, his journey isn't spurred by books but by business.

Growing up in the bustling ports of Algeria where his father works as a merchant,

young Leonardo has been struck by the elegance of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.

He has marveled at how easily traders perform calculations with these strange symbols.

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