Jeremy FarrellIslamics 201, F 2009

Dr. Poonawala

Abbasid Translation Movement

The fact that Greek learning passed into the Arabic language should come as no

great surprise when considering the conditions the early spread of Islam encountered

in their sweep through Mesopotamia and the Levant. The conquests of Alexander the

Great (d. 323 B.C.E.) had brought Hellenic in"uence as far as the Indus, and the Greek

colony of Bactria retained close ties with the Hellenistic world long after it broke free of

direct control. Into the Roman era, Hellenistic administration of Carrhae and Ctesiphon

(modern Iraq), Syria and Egypt as well as centers of learning that were based on the

style of the Athenian Academy - the library of Alexandria, though destroyed in the 4th

century, being most prominent among them - attest to continued Greek in"uence. The

move of the capital of the Roman empire to Constantinople beginning in 326 C.E.

cemented the gaze of the empire toward the Greek-speaking world and from then on

most learned activity within the borders of what was to become the major base of early

Islamic cultural activity was conducted in Greek. Indeed, one such example of this

tendency can be seen in the rise of the neo-Platonist movement based out of

Alexandria, Edessa and Antioch, which embraced its Attic roots while robing itself in

philosophical elements found in more the more eastern reaches of the Hellenized

world.

Arab peoples had lived on the fringes of this society since before 194 C.E., at

which time Septimius Severus recognized their right to live within the borders

established after one of Rome's numerous Parthian wars. The rapid pre-Umayyad

(651-755 CE) spread of Islam moved it into the Hellenized world - though the degree to

which each region was Hellenized di#ered - at every step of the way, and the new

conquerors found a need to come to grips with a Byzantine administrative model and a

Greek-educated polity of administrators of its provinces, Syria and Egypt, especially.

With these conditions clearly facing the Umayyad rulers, it begs the question

why a concerted translation movement did not begin with their rule. The work of

O'Leary and Gutas places the reason squarely at the feet of the type of Greek

administrator found in Damascus: namely, the Chalcedonian Orthodox. The split which

occurred in Eastern Orthodoxy after the Council of Chalcedon pitted the powers of

Constantinople (led by the Chalcedonian Patriarch of Constantinople) and their will to

remake society along insistently Christian lines against the various anti-Chalcedonian

elements and prefectures who resisted the tight control of the capital and viewed the

use of pre-Christian Greek elements in society and learning. The Damascus occupied by

the Umayyads was strongly Chalcedonian and hence aggressively hostile toward pre-

Christian Greek texts whose use would have been frowned upon in any case, much less

in dealings with non-Christians. According to Gutas1, the only means by which the

translation of pre-Christian Greek texts could take place could be performed would be

in a non-Chalcedonian milieu.

Just such an opportunity was realized when Harūn ibn al-Rashīd decided to

move his capital away from the coastal Chalcedonian strongholds and into the interior

of Mesopotamia, the stronghold of Nestorians, Manicheans, Monophysites, Zoroastrians

and various other religious traditions. The acceptance of these communities and their

philosophical leanings allowed for the opportunity to begin the migration of Greek

learning into Arabic. O'Leary makes much of the Indian connection2 while Gutas3

points to communities throughout the empire led by a diverse cast of "international

scholars" hailing from Iraqi Nestorian communities, the Syriac monastic tradition and

Persian scholars familiar with Indian sources. Fluent in a number of languages, these

early interpreters served as references that conveyed foreign wisdom into Arabic.

Members of this coterie such as Abū Mohammed Ibn al-Muqa#aʿ (d. 823) - well-versed

1 Gutas, Dmitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graceo-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries). London/New York 1998, p. 12.

2 O'Leary, De Lacy. How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs. vi. + 196, London, Broadway House (1948), § VII, VIII, IX.

3 Gutas, p. 15-22.

in Pahlavi and Buddhist sources - translated numerous works of astronomy and history,

especially his Siyār Mulūk al-ʿAjam.

By the end of Harūn ibn al-Rashīd's reign, Greek sources had begun to make

their way into the stable of books being prepared for imperial use; medical works

especially made their way down through the Christian Syriac tradition.4 Under

Maʾmūn, who attempted Eratosthenes' trick of measuring the circumference of the

earth, increased demand on mathematical works led to their increased production.

Late during his reign began the work of Hunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 867/8) the most

celebrated of all the translators and founder of the *rst dar al-hikma in ʿAbbāsid

Baghdad. The works produced by him and his circle opened the gates for the

translation of Euclid (the *rst translation of which was produced c. 833), Galen,

Hippocrates, Ptolemy and most importantly Aristotle. Hunayn transcribed at least 20

works relating to Galen during his lifetime and was proli*c in translating other authors

as well. He was to be followed by other luminaries such as Stephanos ibn Basilos

(Hunayn's student), Yusuf al-Khūri al-Qass ($. 903), Qusta ibn Lūqā al-Baʿlbākkī ($.

912-13) and *nally the medical works of al-Hunayn ibn Ibrahim ibn al Hasan ibn

Khurshid at-Ṭabari an-Natṭlī (d. 990) and Abu ʿAlī ʿĪsā ibn Isḥāq ibn Zirʿah (d. 1008),

after whom the e#ort to produce original translations virtually ceased.

4 O'Leary, p. 161.

Modern scholarship on the topic of the Abbasid translation movement made

little headway until the 20th century. Louis Maʾlouf, working out of Beirut, was

instrumental in the work of tying together critical editions of manuscripts, although he

did little in the way of intensive research in the early decades of the century. The *rst

real academic breakthrough to occur came with Max Meyerhof's Von Alexandria nach

Bagdad in 1930. The *rst to trace the movement of neo-Platonist philosophical ideas

through the course of several centuries, Meyerhof's work inspired the e#ort to track

the lines through which certain Greek works passed into Arabic. De Lacy O'Leary took

up the call from Meyerhof, focusing on the means of the transmission of Greek

knowledge through the Hellenized world in How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs. Much

work was still to be done in e#orts to compile editions of manuscripts that could prove

useful to scholarship (the 19th and early 20th century had produced only a few such

editions) and the work of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī in Cairo during the 1950s in this *eld

deserves special mention.

By the 1960s and the three decades following, the emphasis on research had

swung in the direction of tracing the transmission not of single books but of strains of

thought and particular *gures that were translated. Fehmi Jadaane produced various

works on the in"uence of Stoicism in Islamic thought, most notably in La Stoïcisme sur la

Pensée Muslamane; S.M. Stern also during this time produced work chronicling the use of

Pythagoras; Richard Walzer made great strides in the study of the use of Aristotle in

Arabic adab works; through the 1990s this streak persisted, culminating with Alon Ilai's

treatment of Socrates in Arabic literature5

Around the turn of new millennium, the pendulum swung back toward works

concerning the totality of the translation movement, with special emphasis placed on

the role of the context preceding the spread of Islam into Hellenized regions. No work

has done more for the sake of this change in focus that Dmitri Gutas' Greek Thought,

Arabic Culture (1998). Comprehensive and clearly written with a persuasive argument, it

should remain the standard work in the genre for years to come. Other authors

pursuing research in the totality of the Abbasid translation movement include Christina

D'Ancona Costa6 and even the Christian scholar Peter Bruns7. It seems likely in this age

of increased emphasis on comparative scholarly endeavor that works like Bruns', which

more closely examine Christian e#orts in the lead-up to the Islamic era, will continue to

garner attention.

5 Alon, Ilai. Socrates in Mediaeval Arabic Literature (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science Series Vol. X). Leiden (1991).

6 D'Ancona Costa, Cristina. The libraries of the Neoplatonists : Proceedings of the Meeting of the European Science Foundation Network "Late antiquity and Arabic thought : Patterns in the Constitution of European Culture", Strasbourg, March 12-14, 2004. (Brill) Boston, Leiden (2007).

7 Bruns, Peter. Von Athen nach Baghdad: Zur Rezeption grischischer Philosophie von der Spätantike bis zum Islam. (Borengässer) Bonn, 2003.

Arabic Translations/Commentaries of Greek Sources

Aristotle - Kitab al-Siyasah % Tadbir al-Riyasah, al-ma'ruf bi-sirr al-asrar (ed. 'Abd al Rahman

Badawi) Cairo, 1954. - Athulujia Aristu (ed. 'Abd al-Rahman Badawi) Cairo, 1954. -Al-Farabi. Kitab al-Huruf. - Ibn al-Nadim. Al-Fihrist.

Alexander of Aphrodisius - Ibn Abi 'Usaybi'a. Uyun al-anb.

Hermes - Al-Kindi. Kitab Mu 'adalat al Nafs in al-A$atuniyah al-Muhdathah 'inda al 'Arab (ed. 'Abd al Rahman Badawi) Cairo, 1954

Hippocrates- De aere aquis locis (Corpus Mediocorum Graecorum I 1,2) ed. Diller, H. Berlin, 1999.

Galen - Compenndium Timaei Platonis aliorumque dialogorum synopsis quae extant fragmenta

(Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi. Platon Araus 1) ed. Kraus, P. and Walzer, R. London 1951.

- Claudii Galeni opera omnia (Leipzig) 1821-33. Ed. Kühn, Karl G. Trans. Into English by Hildesheim, 1964-65.

- Ibn Miskawaih. Lughz Qabis. Tadhib al-akhlaq.Plato - "Risalat a"atun ila Farfurius * naïf al ghamm wal-hamm wa-ithbat al zuhd" in

al-Mashriq 20 (1922). - Falsafat A$atun wa-ajaza'uha wa-maratib ahza'iha ila akhiriha. Ed. Rosenthal,

Franz. (De Platonis Philosophia) London 1943. - Al-Farabi. Al-medina al-fadhila.

Research in English

Alon, Ilai. Socrates in Mediaeval Arabic Literature (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science Series Vol. X). Leiden (1991).

Given the reverence with which many Arab writers gave to the *gure of Socrates, little of his literature was known to the Arab world at the time of the great Abbasid translation movement when numerous sayings were attributed to the sage. While this would be a wholly unsatisfactory way of approaching the subject for the modern researcher, Alon argues that instead, Socrates was envisioned as a symbol who could adjudicate between Christians and Muslims as well as rationalistic and tradition based Muslims (p. 11) He *rst surveys the biography of Socrates available to Arab writers (Ch. 1), then turns to their use of his sayings (Ch.2) - it is in this section where he makes his argument for the use of Socrates as a mediator when matters were disputed, with pithy sayings *nding their way into the Arabic tradition as ḥikmāt, the most widely employed referencing of Socrates. Mohsen Zakeri's new work on the sayings of Socrates (Before Aristotle Became Aristotle: Pseudo-Aristotelian Aphorisms in Adab al-*lasifa) has shed even more light on a number of these, but Alon's list is nonetheless well executed. The book is an essential introduction to the use of Socrates by Arab ʾudubāʾ.

D'Ancona Costa, Cristina. The libraries of the Neoplatonists : Proceedings of the Meeting of the European Science Foundation Network "Late antiquity and Arabic thought : Patterns in the Constitution of European Culture", Strasbourg, March 12-14, 2004. (Brill) Boston, Leiden (2007).

This edition complies recent scholarly work presented at the proceedings of the 2004 meeting of the European Science Foundation Network. The work is divided into two *elds: the *rst half dealing with the *nal stages of Greek thought in the East under the guise of Neo-Platonism, and the second delving into the use of such a philosophical framework in regards to Arab thinkers. Text-based research is prevalent, to the detriment of deep inquiry into the philosophical concepts themselves. The subject matter is often disparate - topics range from Proclus's use of the Timaeus (Goulet) to an attempted reconstruction of al-Kindi's library (Endress) - though the broad scope of the project lends itself to being a useful resource for bibliographies on a vast array of topics. The overall goal of the project - setting up the Neoplatonists of the 5th century Hellenistic community as the direct antecedents to Arab thought - stems from D'Ancona's view that Neoplatonists were the most important source in the preservation of Greek thought. At least one other scholar (Erismann) disputes the importance with which D'Ancona imbues the Neoplatonists, arguing for due consideration to be given to the likes of Boethius and Marius Victorinus though their pertinence to the Arab world is of little use to the chosen subject.

Gutas, Dmitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graceo-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries). London/New York 1998.

Quite simply the modern standard for research into the question of the transmission of Greek thought into the Arabic literary milieu. Gutas supersedes most previous e#orts in terms of clarity and ful*llment of purpose, namely to pinpoint why and how the Abbasid translation movement happened when and where it did. The culmination of three decades of publishing in the *eld, the work is complete with numerous aids bene*cial to both the determined researcher and the enthused amateur alike - no fewer than 10 indices are provided along with numerous charts and maps; most useful among these is a listing of the Greek philosopher, his work, transmitter into Arabic (if known), *rst known Arabic manuscript and surviving Greek, Latin, and Arabic manuscripts from the source, *nally bringing to light in list form a coherent presentation of a dense subject. It is a work that will be with students of the discipline for as long as the subject retains academic interest. O'Leary, De Lacy. How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs. vi. + 196, London, Broadway House

(1948). Widely panned by some upon its publication in 1948, this work has enjoyed wide acceptance in recent years, especially from the likes of Dmitri Gutas. Initially, reviewers bemoaned the lack of emphasis on the Arabs - as might have been surmised by the title - as well as the stylistic license he employed and ignored the important contributions laid by the author on the channels through which Greek thought arrived at the court of Harūn ibn al-Rashīd. As such, it begins in the Near East post-Alexander the Great, documents the homogenization of Hellenization there though Roman rule, its splintering upon the doctrinal disputes of Eastern Greek churches, and the successive wide diaspora of Hellenized intellectual communities farther east. Its *rst publication contained numerous typographical errors that were corrected in later editions.

Walzer, Richard (ed.). Greek Into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy. Oxford (1962).Taken from across his own academic lifetime, Walzer presents a collection of 11 personal essays surveying the scope of the Abbasid translation movement. A trained classicist, Walzer had to fairly reinvent himself in the pursuit of further *elds of inquiry into Aristotle, his chosen *eld of specialization; in fact, three of the essays cover Aristotle's Poetics, Metaphysics and Logic. From there, Walzer branched out to cover other important *gures who had been translated, Galen particular among them, in a micro-history format. This pursuit proved both successful and was immediately in"uential on close contemporary research; previous forays into the *eld of the

Abbasid translation movement had tended to focus on the movement as a whole; Walzer's work signaled the watershed that led to the study of individual transmissions throughout the next three decades.

Research in FrenchEddé C. and Ma'louf, L. Traités inédits d'anciens philosophes arabes, musulmans et chrétiens : avec des traductions de traités grecs d'Aristote, de Platon et de Pythagore par Isḥâq ibn Honein. Imprimerie catholíque, Beyrouth (1911).

A compendium of key source materials and commentary of the Greek sources used by Christian and Muslim thinkers alike the authors - Ma'alouf especially - were crucial in bringing the contributions of Muslim thinkers on equal footing with those of their Christian counterparts in terms of Hellenistic thought. Working out of the Catholic Press of Beirut, and studying the use of Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoras in the translations of Isḥāq Ibn Hunayn, the authors present a clear work of editing that allows the reader to compare and contrast the use of Arabic terms for the Christian and Muslim advocates, respectively. Published as part of the lifelong work of the authors in Beirut, it remains their most in"uential critical edition and helped garner serious interest in the role of Arab writers in transmitting Greek works.

Jadaane, Fehmi. L'In$uence Du Stoïcisme Sur la Pensée Muslamane. (Dar el-Machreq Éditeurs, Imprimerie Catholique) Beyrouth, 1968.

An early e#ort to elucidate one strand of philosophical inquiry from the translation movement as a whole - following in the footsteps of Walzer - Fehmi argues for the placing of increased importance on the role of Stoic philosophy in Islamic philosophers' works. Peripateticism, the main branch of philosophical inquiry from the 8th-10th centuries CE ascribed to by such luminaries as Ibn Sina and Al Ghazali, absorbed many Stoic principles especially in issues of morality. One scholar (Gouillet) has estimated that as much as 96% of the total material utilized by medieval Arab thinkers was sourced as Peripatetic. Fehmi argues that the contemporary state of academic inquiry had ignored this distinction and tended to rely too heavily on the notion that Peripatetic formulations were dominant sources throughout Muslim thought. His carefully drawn delineations from recognized Stoic sources into forms and treatises which Arab thinkers overwhelmingly considered Peripatetic helped further the importance and impact of the new academic focus on more highly segmented research into the period.

Research in GermanMeyerhof, Max. Von Alexandria nach Baghdad. De Gruyter, 1930.

The style which pervaded academic inquiry regarding the Abbasid translation movement prior to, and including, the early third of the 20th century was relegated to the recognition that a wide corpus of Greek literature had been incorporated into Arabic philosophical and medical literature. Little if any e#ort was made to determine the way in which that transference occurred whether on geographical, cultural or linguistic terms. Meyerhof's groundbreaking work was the *rst to attempt a complete reconstruction of philosophical concepts from their origin in 3rd century B.C.E. Alexandria to the Baghdad of the al-Kindīs and al-Farābīs of the world. A geographical mapping of important Greek philosophical conceptions and thinkers across time, Meyerhof's work revolutionized the approach to the link between Greek and Arab thought.

Bruns, Peter. Von Athen nach Baghdad: Zur Rezeption grischischer Philosophie von der Spätantike bis zum Islam. (Borengässer) Bonn, 2003.

A return to the tradition of applying a holistic approach to the study of the Abbasid translation movement, Bruns attempts a reconstruction spreading back further than any other attempted research; indeed, it marks the *rst time that anyone since Meyerhof seriously dared a reconstruction of the patterns of philosophic thought from before the Common Era. As such, it is a sprawling work and necessarily leaves stones unturned. As a scholar of early Christianity, he lends much force to the idea of Alexandrian Gnostic thinkers bearing in"uence on later forms, a thesis which seems tenuous at best. Major *gures, however, are amply covered and the connection drawn between thinkers of di#erent eras is relatively clear. An excellent index is of great help in this endeavor.