Greek traditions reach Arabic

This lesson asks you to describe some major philosophical traditions and to explain how they approach the big questions. The museum shows how two Greek traditions, that of Plato and that of Aristotle, came to readers of Arabic, through the Neoplatonists and through Arabic interpreters. It does not set out how each tradition approaches the big questions, so your class will add the explanation and the other traditions. ¹

Compare how the two records say the Greek tradition reached Arabic readers: through intermediaries and through commentators. Ask which of these could change what a tradition says.

Read how one Arabic author handles a Greek authority. In Kitab al-Hayawan, al-Jahiz often quotes Aristotle, whom he calls "the master of logic" ^{2 3}. Discussing the lion, he takes from him that the cure for its bite is the cure for a dog's bite, and builds on this the points of likeness between dog and lion ². On hens he reports from him that one hen laid eighteen eggs, each with two yolks, and that two chicks hatched from each egg ⁴. He does not always defer: where Aristotle claims that seeing an eagle's chick is a hard thing, al-Jahiz says "I am not able to judge between them" and turns to what he knows of the crows of Basra ⁵. Notice three moves with one authority: he quotes it, builds on it, and says where he cannot judge it.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam keeps apart two things that are easy to run together. The Arabic bibliographers list all the dialogues of the Greek corpus, but no Arabic translation of a dialogue has been traced ⁶. What reached Arab authors, it says, was Plato read through the Neoplatonists Plotinus, Porphyry and Proclus, Galen's summary of the Timaeus, which came through Hunayn b. Ishaq, and the arrangement of the dialogues, which al-Farabi used and partly reproduced ⁷. The article adds that Plato was also made the author of alchemical and magical works ⁶. In the article's account, then, a list of titles is one thing and what was translated another.

Ask of each witness how far it stands from Plato's own words. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says the Arabic lives of Plato add little to the Greek tradition, and that the principal collection of his sayings is Hunayn's Nawadir al-falasifa ⁶. Ibn al-Nadim, citing the book of Plutarch, gives his life, and the source differs on his age: eighty-one years, or eighty in Ishaq's report ⁸. Al-Mas'udi relates that on the gate of the Sabian assembly at Harran there was written in Syriac: "Whoever knows himself becomes divine" ⁹. That is a saying known through one author's report of an inscription.

Al-Jahiz weighs Aristotle on a claim about eagles, while the Arabic lives of Plato add little to the Greek ones. Which of these two ways of receiving a tradition gives a reader more reason to trust what it passes on, and why?

• Plato: his life in Ibn al-Nadim and the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and what is known of how his works reached Arabic.
• Aristotle: the interpreters Ibn al-Nadim names, and the passages al-Jahiz draws from him.
• Kitab al-Hayawan: al-Jahiz's book, where the quotations above are found.

Read Aristotle and list the interpreters Ibn al-Nadim names. Then read Plato and note what the Encyclopaedia of Islam says about Arabic translations of his dialogues.