The Arabic History of Science of Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht (fl. ca 770-809) and Its Middle Persian Sources (original) (raw)
History as Science: The Fifteenth-Century Debate in Arabic and Persian
Journal of Early Modern History, 2017
In the fifteenth century, scholars writing in Arabic and Persian debated the nature of historical inquiry and its place among the sciences. While the motivations and perspectives of the various scholars differed, the terms and parameters of the debate remained remarkably fixed and focused, even as it unfolded across a vast geographic space between Herat, Cairo, and Constantinople. This article examines the contours of this debate and the relationships between five historians working on these issues. Although the scholars who considered these questions frequently arrived at different conclusions, they all firmly agreed, in contrast to previous doubt regarding the status of history, that historical inquiry did indeed constitute a distinct science requiring its own particular method. Accordingly, the debate and its conclusions helped cement the place of history within the broader pantheon of the sciences as conceived by scholars in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth century onwards.
Micrologus XXIV (2016), The Impact of Arabic Sciences in Europe and Asia
La rivista è disponibile online su «Mirabile. Archivio digitale della cultura latina medievale»: www.mirabileweb.it. Ch. Burnett, On Judging and Doing in Arabic and Latin Texts on Astrology and Divination - D. Jacquart, Quelques propos introductifs: la confluence des sources grecques et arabes dans l'Occident médiéval latin. PRACTICAL SCIENCES. J. Chandelier, Le concept de maladie chronique, des Grecs aux Arabes et des Arabes aux Latins - M. R. McVaugh, Why Rhazes? - M. Pereira, Projecting Perfection. Remarks on the Origin of the "Alchemy of the Elixir" - A. Djebbar, La circulation de l'algèbre arabe en Europe et son impact - M. Abattouy, The Corpus of Mechanics of Al-Isfizar?: its Structure and Signification in the Context of Arabic Mechanics. DIVINATION, MAGIC, ASTROLOGY. D. Juste, The Impact of Arabic Sources on European Astrology: Some Facts and Numbers - J.-P. Boudet, Les comètes dans le Centiloquium et le De cometis du pseudo-Ptolémée - N. Weill-Parot, Devenirs de la magie astrale hermétique arabe dans le monde latin: signification "culturelle" d'une utilisation (XII e- XVe siècle) - G. de Callataÿ, Who were the Readers of the Rasa 'il Ikhwanal-Safa'? - M. Bagheri, Kushyar ibn Labban's Mathematical Approach in His Astronomical Handbook - Shi Yunli Zhu Haohao, Calculating the Fate of Chinese Dynasties with the Islamic Method: The Chinese Study and Application of Arabic Astrology in the 17th Century. RECEPTION AND ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE. I. Ventura, Medieval Pharmacy and the Arabic Heritage: the Salernitan Collection Circa instans - V. Boudon-Millot, L'apport des traducteurs arabes dans le débat sur l'authenticité des traités galéniques - J.-M. Mandosio, The Use of al-Kindî's Treatise On Rays in Peter of Zealand's Elucidation of Marvelous Things (End of the 15th Century) - M. Yano, Eastern Perspective of the Conference - A.Paravicini Bagliani, Western Perspective of the Conference. Indexes by D. Jacquart and A. Paravicini Bagliani
This paper raises the question as to what role teaching (teachers, teaching material, orality, students) played in intellectual activities and the codification of those activities into texts and manuscripts with respect to the mathematical sciences and natural philosophy in third/ninth-century Baghdad. This issue is approached via the question of how extant works of that period, which are predominantly seen by modern historians of science either as translations or as newly composed research works, can be identified as having had a teaching function. The question of relevance, organization, and content of teaching in the highly innovative context of the mathematical sciences and natural philosophy of the third/ninth century is historiographically significant beyond the recovery of historical details about texts and their character.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE EIGHTH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE OF IRANIAN STUDIES, 2019
The writings of the astrologer Dorotheus have survived primarily in the Arabic translation of his Pentabiblos. Despite initial conclusions that Dorotheus entered Arabic directly, modern scholars have identified the survival of this work as a product of the translations of Greek works into Middle Persian, begun by order of Shāpūr I in the mid-third century. According to this hypothesis, the Arabic version represents a translation of a Middle Persian intermediary. The dates proposed for Dorotheus (and thus, by extension, the viability of this model of cultural transmission) derive from internal evidence, including horoscopes. The modern editor of the text contended that two horoscopes were appended by Persian astrologers. A reconsideration of these horoscopes depreciates the hypothesis of a Middle Persian intermediary by revealing difficulties in the interpretation of the manuscripts and editorial decisions. An account of the transmission of Zoroastrian literature in Arabic requires an understanding of the varied paths of astrological lore into Middle Persian and Arabic.
affinities that make the text seem at home in the second century) while emphasizing the cognitive aspects (ratiocinatio, mens) that more closely resemble ideas of later, Neoplatonic thinkers. Chapter 4 extends Siebert's argument and is, in many ways, the book's most interesting and valuable section. Some of its evidence is textual, such as the fact that certain (garbled) transliterated terms in the text (e.g., "baptisterion") were not used until at least the third and fourth centuries. Further evidence is doctrinal. For example, Siebert argues that many of Ptolemy's claims make more sense as responses to his supposed successors (Galen, Calcidius, Damianos, and Philoponos) than as rejoinders to his predecessors (Euclid). Siebert also highlights internal inconsistencies between the Optics and Ptolemy's astronomical works concerning atmospheric refraction and pneuma. Ultimately, he suggests that the simplest explanation of all these observations is that Ptolemy did not write the Optics at all but that it is a product of a much later period, a mere century or two before al-Kindi.