Whose account is it?

This lesson asks you to tell primary from secondary sources and to judge how far a source can be trusted, from who wrote it, why, and with what knowledge. The museum offers cases from Arabic books about Greek learning: one book with two accounts of its origin, a well-known story that rests on a single author, and a life told with two different numbers. The ancient sources themselves, and the tools for checking them, are for your class to bring. ¹

Ask who wrote each account, how far the writer stood from the events, and what the writer wanted readers to think. Set two accounts of the same thing side by side and say what each one adds. Notice where the museum's own record says that it needs another source.

Read the origin of one book as two reports tell it. The record of Usul Uqlidis says that Kashf al-Zunun reports, from Qadi-zada al-Rumi, that one of the kings of Greece asked a man from Tyre named Euclid to refine and arrange the book, and that it became famous under his name. ² The same record gives a second report: al-Kindi's epistle says that a man named Apollonius the carpenter composed it in fifteen treatises, and Euclid was then ordered to correct it, and he explained thirteen treatises. His student Asclepius found the fourteenth and fifteenth treatises. ² Ask who each report makes the author, who it makes the reviser, and who it says gave the order.

The record names several translators of this book, among them Hajjaj ibn Yusuf al-Kufi and Hunayn ibn Ishaq. The records read for this lesson preserve no statement by either of them about why they translated it. What they show is the work: Hajjaj made two translations, the Harunian and the Ma'munian, on which reliance is placed. ² Of the wider translation movement, Ibn al-Nadim reports from Abu Sulayman al-Mantiqi that the Banu Shakir paid the translators, among them Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Habish ibn al-Hasan, and Thabit ibn Qurra, about five hundred dinars a month. ³ That shows who paid, not what the translators intended.

Two accounts of one book's making, each tied to a named source. Kashf al-Zunun, reporting Qadi-zada al-Rumi, has a king of Greece ask Euclid, a man of Tyre, to refine and arrange the book, which then became famous under his name. ² The record of Euclid gives al-Kindi's account from the Fihrist: the book was composed by a man called Ablinus the carpenter; when it grew old and was neglected, one of the kings of Alexandria asked for the science of geometry, and Euclid was in his time; the king ordered him to revise it and explain it, and he did, and so it was attributed to him. ⁴ One account names no earlier author, the other does and adds a king of Alexandria. Neither record says which account is right, and nor does this page.

The museum does not hold Euclid's book, only Arabic reports about it. The record of Usul Uqlidis rests on Kashf al-Zunun alone, the record of Euclid on the Fihrist. They agree that Hajjaj translated the book twice, the second, Ma'munian version being the one relied on. ^{2 4} They differ in names: the carpenter is Apollonius in one and Ablinus in the other, and another translator is Hunayn ibn Ishaq in one and Ishaq ibn Hunayn in the other. The records do not say whether these are variant spellings or different people. A life is reported the same way: Ibn al-Nadim, citing the book of Plutarch, gives the life of Plato, and the source differs on his age, eighty-one, or eighty in Ishaq's report. ⁵

Two works agree that Hajjaj translated Euclid twice, and they differ on the carpenter's name. Which of these two kinds of statement would you check first against a third source, and why, and what would a match or a mismatch change in how far you trust the rest?

• Usul Uqlidis: the two reports on the book's making, and its translators and commentators, as Kashf al-Zunun gives them.
• Uqlidis: al-Kindi's account as Ibn al-Nadim relays it, and the list of translators and commentators.
• The Abbasid Translation Movement: Ibn al-Nadim's account of the paid translators, which the record says comes from him alone.
• Plato (Aflatun): his life as Ibn al-Nadim gives it from Plutarch, with two ages.

Read Usul Uqlidis (Euclid's Elements), The Abbasid Translation Movement and Plato (Aflatun). For each, write down who is the source of each claim, then say which claim you would check first and where.