Arab Transmission of the Classics: Difference between revisions

This article explores claims that Muslims saved the works of Greek philosophers from destruction.

Introduction

The Arab transmission of the classics refers to the claim that Arabic commentators such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd saved the work of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers from destruction. According to the claim, these works would have perished in the European dark ages between fifth and the tenth centuries, had Islamic philosophers not preserved them by translating them into Arabic.^[1] However, the first Latin texts to be used after the dark ages and the European reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula were translations from the Greek preserved by the Byzantines, while Arabic translation were largely used only where Latin texts were unavailable or unintelligible.

Arabic commentators, particularly Ibn Rushd, nevertheless had a profound influence on the scholastic philosophers of the Latin West in the thirteenth century. In particular, the work of Arabic commentators allowed dense and difficult texts, such as those of Aristotle, to be more easily understood.

Background

The Western intellectual tradition is generally considered to have begun in ancient Greece in the fifth century, with the work of mathematicians such as Euclid, philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, and scientists such as Eratosthenes (who calculated the circumference of the Earth around 240 BC). The main principle underlying this tradition is naturalistic, humanistic and rational, emphasizing the role of human reason in discovering truth, as opposed to reliance on supernatural or "revealed" truth.

Greek science and philosophy was inherited by the ancient Romans, but their culture was lost after the collapse of the Roman empire in the West during the fifth and sixth centuries. Ancient learning was not "recovered" in the West until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a result of the transmission both of Greek ideas, which had been preserved and developed in the Byzantine and Arab world in the early middle ages, and also of the texts themselves, which had been almost completely lost in the West. These texts were translated into Latin, the language of educated intellectuals during that period.

Syriac Translations

Knowledge of Aristotle came by two routes to the West: Latin translations directly from the Greek made in the twelfth century (see below), and Latin translations from Arabic, which were themselves translations from Syriac of philosophical and scientific works that had been preserved by Eastern Christians in Mesopatamia, Syria, and Egypt. The translators were mostly Nestorian and Jacobite Christians, working in the 200 years following the early Abbasid period (c. 800). The most important translator of this group was the Syriac-speaking Christian Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (809-873), known to the Latins as Joannitius. The texts were first translated into Syriac from Greek and then into Arabic. Despite this lengthy chain of transmission, the translations were generally accurate, aiming for a literal reading rather than elegance.^[2]

James of Venice

Translations to Latin directly from Greek began with the work of James of Venice. James was an Aristotelian scholar who flourished in the 12^th century, and he is generally regarded as the most important of the 12^th century translators of Greek texts into Latin. He is thought to have translated Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Sophistici elenchi, Metaphysics, and several important works of natural philosophy, as well as most of the Parva naturalia, most of which were widely circulated. Little else is known about his life.

According to a passage from Robert of Torigny's chronicle: "James, a cleric from Venice, translated from the Greek into Latin several books of Aristotle and commented on them, viz. the Topics, Prior and Posterior Analytics, and Elenchi, although an earlier translation of these same books was already in existence" [MP 1952]. According to other documents, James was a Greek from Venice who called himself a philosopher. He appears to have been present at an 1136 theological debate in Constantinople between Anselm of Havelberg and the archbishop of Nicomedia. In 1148, he advised the archbishop of Ravenna on the precedence of Ravenna over other archbishoprics. In Bologna in the 1140s, he may have disputed with Magister Albericus over the interpretation of the Sophistici Elenchi. His commentary on the Elenchi is mentioned in a 12^th century grammatical quaestio, and an early 13^th century author mentions his commentary on the Posterior Analytics [Ebbesen 1977].

James translated the Metaphyisics directly from Greek, but this included only the first four books, requiring scholars in the early thirteenth century to rely on translations from Arabic for the complete work.

Scholars have debated whether the Latin versions of the so-called logica nova (the Prior Analytics, Topics, Sophistici elenchi, and the Posterior Analytics) should be ascribed to Boethius or James. Stylistic analysis by Minio-Paluello published in 1952 suggested that the common versions of the Prior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistici Elenchi are consistent in style with each other and with the known Boethian translations of the 'logica vetus.' By contrast, the Posterior Analytics has similar stylistic features to a passage translated from Greek in James' advice to the archbishop of Ravenna, as well as Latin translations of some of the other works of Aristotle that were not known to the early medieval philosophers, including (according to Minio-Paluello) the Metaphysics itself.^[3]

Michael Scot

Michael Scot was a thirteenth century translator who translated two major works from Arabic to Latin in Toledo, Spain, then moved to Palermo, Sicily, where he was associated with the court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen. There, he dedicated the translation of Avicenna’s book on animals to Frederick, and mentions that two books of his own were commissioned by Frederick. Michael was apparently the first to make a complete Latin translation from Arabic, the Metaphysica Nova, some time between 1220 and 1235, in addition to several other important works.

William of Luna, working in the area of Naples, was another translator who may have been associated with the Hohenstaufens, in particular Manfred Hohenstaufen.^[4] He translated important commentaries on Aristotle originally composed by Ibn Rushd.

Another anonymous translation of the Metaphysics from Greek (the media) was nearly complete except for book 11, forming the basis of William of Moerbeke's later complete translation. However, this seems to have remained unknown until the middle of the century, based on the numbers of surviving manuscripts.

In most cases, Latin scholars used translations from Greek, turning to Arabic translations only when the more intelligible and more accurate Greek ones were missing. The only Syriac-Arabic translations to achieve widespread circulation were the De caelo, Metereologica I-III, De Animalibus, and Metaphysics; each of these except De Animalibus were soon replaced by William of Moerbeke's translations from Greek.

William of Moerbeke

William of Moerbeke (c. 1215 – 1286) was one of the most prolific and influential translators of Greek philosophical texts in the Middle Ages. Very little is known of his life.^[5] He was born probably in 1215 in the village of Moerbeke, now in Belgium, and probably entered the Dominican convent at Louvain as a young man. Most of his surviving work was written between 1259 and 1272.

William is probably the most well-known of the translators from Greek. A common myth posits that he was the first to translate Aristotle directly from Greek, but it is largely untrue. For example, his translation of the the Posterior Analytics is also a revision of an earlier translation by James of Venice. However, he wrote important translations of the remaining works available only in Arabic, namely De Caelo (1260), Metereologica I-III (c. 1260), De Animalibus (1260) and parts of the Metaphysics (before 1272).

He was the first to translate lesser works such as De motu animalium, De progressu animalium (1260), as well as the important Politics (1260, an important witness to the Greek text) and Poetics (1278). He wrote new translations of Categories, De interpretatione (1268). He revised the Posterior Analytics (1269), Sophistici Elenchi (before 1270), Physics (c. 1260-70), De anima (before 1268), Parva naturalia, and Metaphysics.

William additionally translated the works of Greek commentators: Simplicius on the Categories and De caelo, Ammonius on De Interpretatione, Alexander on the Meteorologica and De sensu, Philoponus on De anima (Book III), and Themistius on the De anima. He also translated a non-Aristotelian work, the Elementatio theologica of Proclus.^[6]

See Also

• Philosophy - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Philosophy

• Golden Age - A hub page that leads to other articles related to the "Golden Age"

References

Notes