Abraham bar Hiyya, also known as Savasorda, was a 12th century Jewish mathematician and astronomer in Barcelona. In this beautiful introduction to astronomy, bar Hiyya’s text appears in Hebrew alongside a Latin translation. “Islamic science” refers to science in a cosmopolitan culture that was shaped by the Islamic faith. Arabic was the predominant language, but most people were not of Arab ethnicity. The authors of Islamic scientific texts might have been of any kind of Middle Eastern, North African or European extraction.