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A movement for the globalization of science and philosophy was set in motion in the Islamic world during the medieval period. This movement was marked by extensive translations of scientific and philosophical works from Greece, India, Persia and Egypt, a synthesis of the researches of Muslim scientists and those of other lands, the establishment of scientific institutions, the employment of Arabic as the lingua franca of scientific research, translation and communication, and the creation of a community of scientists and translators from different religious, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Roger Bacon acknowledged that almost all of Aristotle's works were available only in Arabic translations, with only a small percentage having been translated into Latin. He asserted that without Arabic, Greek knowledge would have never reached the Europeans. Montgomery Watt has remarked that no people in the world translated from foreign languages as much as Muslims. George Sarton, the celebrated historian of science, has observed that, prior to the 15th century, almost all the works of classical writers were available only in Arabic.
The scientific legacy of Islamic civilization greatly contributed to the European Renaissance. (See J. R. Hayes: The Genius of Arab Civilization: Source of Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass, 1983).
Furthermore, Muslim mathematicians and scientists had a significant role in the globalization of technical knowledge through the movement of ideas across the Old World. For example, the decimal system and some early results in trigonometry went from India to Europe in the early years of the second millennium, transmitted through the works of Arab and Iranian mathematicians. Also, the Latin versions of the mathematical results of Indian mathematicians Aryabhata, Varahmihira and Brahmagupta, from their Sanskrit treatises produced between the fifth and seventh centuries appeared in Europe through two distinct steps, going first from Sanskrit to Arabic and then to Latin. As leaders of innovative thought in that period in history, Muslim intellectuals were among the most committed globalizers of science and mathematics. The religion of the people involved, whether Muslim or Hindu or Christian, made little difference to the scholarly commitments of these Muslim leaders of mathematics or science.
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