Book Title | Greek Thought Arabic Culture |
Book Author | Dimitri Gutas. |
Total Pages | 248 |
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Language | English |
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Greek Thought – Arabic Culture – The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd-4thl8th-10th. centuries) by Dimitri Gutas
GREEK THOUGHT – ARABIC CULTURE
This is a study of the major social, political, and ideological factors that occasioned the unprecedented translation movement from Greek into Arabic in Baghdad, the newly founded capital of the Arab dynasty of the ‘Abbasids, during the first two centuries of their rule (the eighth through the tenth centuries).
It draws upon a long and distinguished line of historical and philological works on Graeco-Arabic studies, or the study of the medieval translations of secular Greek works into Arabic.
It can thus gratefully dispense with the who, the what, and the when of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement and concentrate on the how and why, in an effort to understand and explain it as a social and historical phenomenon.
Graeco-Arabic studies has its formal origins (insofar as scholarly investigations of any subject can be said to have formal origins) in the wish expressed by the members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen, and recorded in the minutes of the session held in 1830, “that a collection be made of the references to Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, and Persian translations of Greek authors, an accurate account of which we are lacking to this day” (“Ut colligantur notitiae de versionibus auctorum Graecorum Syriacis, Arabicis, Armeniacis, Persicis, quarum versionum historia accurata adhuc caremus,” as reported by Wenrich in his preface).
Two scholars responded to this call, Gustav Flügel and Johann G. Wenrich, with essays, written in Latin, that appeared in 1841 and 1842 respectively.
Flügel’s “Dis- sertatio” is a modest survey of ninety-one Arabic interpretes, i.e., both translators and students of Greek works, while Wenrich’s Com- mentatio is a more elaborate study following the specifications mentioned by the Royal Society:
the first part contains a detailed account of the background and nature of the translations of secular Greek works into Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, and Persian, and the second lists the Greek authors and their works that had been so translated.
The bibliographical survey of Arabic translations and translators was continued half a century later by Moritz Stein- schneider who brought the work of Wenrich and Flügel up to date in a succession of articles published in various periodicals (1889-96) and reprinted jointly under separate cover only in 1960.
Since Steinschneider’s days much new information has been acquired, not least through the impressively comprehensive bibliographies of the Arabic sciences presented by Manfred Ullmann (Medizin (1970), Geheimwissenschaften (1972)) and Fuat Sezgin (GAS III-VII (1970–9]).
These efforts culminated in the recent (1987–92) book- length article by Gerhard Endress, remarkable for its synthesis and historical contextualization. Published in two separate volumes of the collective work Grundriss der Arabischen Philologie (GAP), it offers the most extensive and up-to-date narrative and bibliographical survey of the translations, the translators, and the development in Arabic of each specialization.
Franz Rosenthal, who taught us all (and me in particular) as much by word as by example through his talent to identify and focus, in Graeco-Arabic studies as in other fields, on the truly significant, had compiled a reader of original sources from the translation literature and its aftermath in Arabic culture, or, as he called it,
The Classical Heritage in Islam (1965, English 1975). This reader supplements and gives contour and substance to our perception of the translation movement and the Arabic philosophical and scientific tradition so masterfully surveyed by Endress. The just completed (1997) max- imum opus of Josef van Ess,
Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra, adds immeasurable depth and breadth to our knowledge of the intellectual life of the society which produced the translation movement. It is a mine of apposite information and sagacious interpretation that will constitute, for generations to come, the starting point of all studies of ‘Abbāsid society.
The incredibly rich and unique work of David Pingree, finally, on the medieval transmission of the sciences from and into Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Greek, Arabic, and Latin, has shed much light on the translation movement in concrete and specific details that are frequently our sole fixed points of chronological and geographical reference.
This study could not have been written without the work in print of these yah kéVTEPOL predecessors and QuÓTrovou colleagues (or perhaps the adjectives should be reversed), my debt to whom will be amply apparent to the reader on every page.
But I also benefited from informal talks with a number of individuals who shared with me their insight and knowledge.
I remember a casual conversation with Muhsin Mahdi over a cup of coffee many years ago, when I had just completed my graduate studies.
He hinted, very inconspicuously as is his wont, that there was no social and historical study of the translation movement to complement Steinschneider’s biblio- graphical survey of translations (at that time the only one available) and the collection of readings in Rosenthal’s Classical Heritage.
I took notice, for a good reason:
Ramsay MacMullen had taught me to ask why in historical analysis. More recently, the same subject came up in numerous stimulating talks with George Saliba, who urged me to write an article on it. Richard Stoneman of Routledge at about that time suggested a short book, and exhibited a rare combination of support, judiciousness, and patience thereafter.
That the undertaking did not grow wildly beyond bounds and that it was finished at all is due, as always, to loanna, a true sister of Athena and my incessant source of prudence, insight, and strength. I am truly grateful to all of them.
I hope that the final result is what each had originally in mind, but if not, I can only rephrase the famous Latin adage: books have a mind of their own, and after a certain point they tend to become assertive of their direction.
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