The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement and the Reception of Greek Philosophy by Arabic-Islamic philosophers
in the 9th and 10th century
by Elvira Wakelnig
Übersicht
I. Pre-conditions for the Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement
The pre-conditions for the development of the so-called "Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement" have been studied in detail by Dimitri Gutas in his volume Greek thought, Arabic culture (London: Routledge, 1998). He discerns two historical situations as conditiones sina quae non: the Arab conquest and following union of large parts of Africa, Asia and Europe under Islamic rule and the coming to power of the ’Abbasid dynasty in 750:
- the Arab conquest and the Islamic empire:
"Certain material conditions that prepared a background against which a translation movement could take place and flourish were established by two momentous historical events, the early Arab conquests through the Umayyad period and the ’Abbasid revolution that culminated in 134/750. …. The historical significance of the Arab conquests can hardly be overestimated. Egypt and the Fertile Crescent were reunited with Persia and India politically, administratively, and most important, economically, for the first time since Alexander the Great, and for a period that was to last significantly longer than his brief lifetime. …. This allowed for the free flow of raw materials and manufactured goods, agricultural products and luxury items, people and services, techniques and skills, ideas, methods, and modes of thought." (Gutas: Greek thought, Arabic culture, p. 11-12)
- The different situations during the Umayyad and the ’Abbasid reign:
"After the Arab conquests and throughout the Umayyad period (661-750), and possibly even beyond the mid-eighth century, Greek was widely current in Syria and Palestine as the native language of significant portions of the local population, as the lingua franca of commerce and business, and as the language of learning of Christian clerics, especially the Melkites. … The Umayyad central administration in Damascus followed Byzantine practices by and large, while the language of administration, until the reforms of ’Abd-al- Malik (r. 65/685-86/705), was Greek. … the prevailing high culture, especially among those Greek-speaking groups with whom the Umayyads were in direct contact, was the Greek Orthodox Christianity espoused in imperial Contantinople. …. By the seventh century this Byzantine high culture was inimically indifferent to pagan Greek learning, having left behind the stage of confrontation characterizing the previous age of the church fathers. Hellenism was the defeated enemy, to be treated with contemptuous indifference because it was irrelevant". (Gutas: Greek thought, Arabic culture, p. 17-8)
In Syro-Palestine and Egypt, "heavily Greek-speaking", translation was a "quotidian reality" (cf. p. 23).
In the course of the ’Abbasid revolution the capital was moved to Baghdad – away from Byzantine influence. There, in ’Iraq, the demographic mix of the population was a completely different one: Aramaic-speakers (Christians and Jews), Persian-speakers and Arabs, whose culture was Hellenized, preserving the Classical Greek heritage. (cf. p. 19- 20)
The ’Abbasids also had to legitimise their rule in the eyes of the so-called "Persian" faction and for that purpose incorporated Sasanian culture (cf. p. 29) with a special focus on the astrological tradition, which also provided means for the ’Abbasids to present themselves as the heavenly approved rulers (cf. p. 33-46). Therefore the prevailing condition was in general favourable to the reception of foreign cultural heritage.
Al-Mansur (754-775) and his son al-Mahdi (775-785) initiated the translation movement as such, being in need of ideological legitimisation and of practical sciences (astrology, astronomy, mathematics, physics etc.).
Two kinds of translation-technique:
- Word-by-word (incl. many transcriptions)
- Reproducing the meaning (school of Hunayn b. Ishaq)
II. Circle of al-Kindi
The role of al-Kindi and the circle of translators gathered around him has been masterly described by Gerhard Endreß in his article The Circle of al-Kindi. Early Arabic Translations from the Greek and the Rise of Islamic Philosophy (in: Ed. Endress, Gerhard/Kruk, Remke: The ancient tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism, Leiden 1997, p. 43-76.):
The introduction of philosophical material into the bulk of translated texts is closely linked with the name of al-Kindi (d. around 870), the so-called "first philosopher of the Arabs", who was a polymath in the translated sciences and developed "a research program whose aim was to acquire and complete the sciences that were transmitted from the ancients" (Gutas: Greek thought, Arabic culture, p. 120). Herein philosophy regained its "role of ruling art: ’the art of arts, and the science of sciences’ …. giving a final purpose to the individual disciplines", but also "served to represent the class-consiousness" of al-Kindi’s circle (Endreß: The Circle of al-Kindi, p. 50).
In order to legitimate their interest in Greek philosophy, al-Kindi and his successors, namly al-’Amiri, presented the ancient Greeks as having strong linkage to the Arabs:
- al-Kindi "devised a genealogy according to which Yunan, the eponymous ancestor of the ancient Greeks (i.e., the Ionians), was presented as the brother of Qahtan, the ancestor of the Arabs. In this way the sciences of the ancient Greeks could be presented as Arab in origin, and their cultivation in ’Abbasid society through the translation movement would be no more than repatriation of these sciences among their original owners." (Gutas: Greek thought, Arabic culture, p. 88)
- al-’Amiri presented the Koranic (31, 12) sage Luqman as the first one who acquired wisdom and depicted Empedocles as a student of Luqman. (al-’Amiri: Amad, p. 70)
What was transmitted to the Arabs?
- philosophy as it was taught in the schools of late Antiquity, based on the works of Platon and Aristotle, but deprived of most of the original Platonic works because of the Christian opposition against them, enriched with commentaries by Peripatetics and Neoplatonists, and Neoplatonic writings ascribed to Aristotle (cf. Endreß: The Circle of al-Kindi, p. 50-51).
III. The Arabic Plotiniana and Procliana
The Enneads by Plotinus – considered to be the first Neoplatonist – and the Elements of Theology by Proclus – considered to be the last Neoplatonist – were at least partly translated into Arabic. In both cases it is not clear whether originally the whole work was translated or only parts of it, possibly in the shape of some Greek summary or paraphrase:
- Plotiniana Arabica: Theology of Aristotle, Sayings of al-Sayh al-Yunani, Risala li-l-Sayh al- Yunani fi bayan ’alamay al-ruhani wa-l-gismani, Risala fi l-’ilm al-ilahi, and new material still emerges
- Procliana Arabica (restricted to the rendering of the Elements of Theology): situation is complicated, two groups of texts can be discerned: Proclus Arabus and the tradition of the Liber de Causis, which seems to be influenced by the Plotiniana Arabica
Observation: The Arabic Plotinus and Proclus differ significantly from their Greek counterparts. The more complicated author (Proclus) gets replaced by concepts of the less complicated author (Plotin).
Questions:
- when and where did the textual changes take place (in the Greek, Syriac, Arabic)?
- why (because of different Greek texts, of misunderstandings, of the chronological order (Plotinus was translated first, everything was read in the light of his thoughts?), or simply because of the lack of enough textual material to understand the whole complexity of the Proclean system)?
Trying to find answers, two different approaches were suggested (cf. Endreß: Proclus Arabus and Zimmermann: Proclus Arabus rides again).
Why these questions are important: Apart from the apparent importance to the History of Ideas, because the Arabic translations are often the oldest textual evidence we have of a work (in some cases even the only - writings of Alexander of Aphrodisias or of Aristotelian commentators). They are therefore of value for the reconstruction of the original Greek text.
IV: Example: al-’Amiris Fusul fi l-Ma’alim al-ilahiya
Cf. Elvira Wakelnig:Feder, Tafel, Mensch. Al-’Amiris Fusul fi l-Ma’alim al-ilahiya und die arabische Proklos-Rezeption im 10. Jh., Leiden: Brill, 2006.
The Fusul fi l-Ma’alim al-ilahiya are a paraphrase of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, but apparently not based on the Arabic Liber de Causis. Therefore E. Wakelnig argues for the existence of an Arabic "proto-LdC", which she calls "Ur-LdC" (cf. Wakelnig: Feder, Tafel, Mensch, p. 71-73).
The difference in dealing with corporeality makes the different approaches of al-’Amiri and Proclus clear: Proclus’ disdain or contempt for the body versus al-’Amiri’s approach, which is influenced by Islamic doctrine (e.g. the bodily resurrection of the dead, which is also discernable in al-’Amiris K. al- Amad).
In the Fusul fi l-Ma’alim al-ilahiya, al-’Amiri also fuses the Proclean terminology with the one of his own religious setting, namely the Islamic one and identifies philosophical entities with Koranic ones:
"In philosophical parlance, one may call the Pen the ’Universal Intellect’, the Command the ’Universal Forms’, the Tablet the ’Universal Soul’, and the Throne the ’Regular Sphere’ and the ’Sphere of spheres’." (trans. Rowson in JAOS 104 (1984), p. 196)
V. Bibliography and further reading
- C. D’Ancona/R. Taylor: Liber de causis, in: Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques, Supplément 2003, 599-647.
- G. Bergsträsser : Hunain ibn Ishaq über die syrischen und arabischen Galen-Übersetzungen, 1925.
- G. Endreß: Proclus Arabus. Zwanzig Abschnitte aus der Institutio Theologica in arabischer Übersetzung, 1973.
- G. Endreß: The Circle of al-Kindi. Early Arabic Translations from the Greek and the Rise of Islamic Philosophy, in: Ed. G. Endress/R. Kruk: The ancient tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism, 1997, p. 43-76.
- D. Gutas: Greek thought, Arabic culture, 1998.
- A. L. Ivry: Al-Kindi’s Metaphysics. A Translation of Ya’qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindis Treatise "On First Philosophy" (fi l-Falsafah al-ula), 1974.
- F. E. Peters: Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam, 1968.
- E. Rowson: A Muslim Philosopher on the Soul and its Fate: al-’Amiri’s Kitab al-Amad ’ala l-abad, 1988.
- E. Wakelnig: Feder, Tafel, Mensch. Al-’Amiris Fusul fi l-Ma’alim al-ilahiya und die arabische Proklos-Rezeption im 10. Jh., 2006.
- F. Zimmermann: Proclus Arabus rides again, in: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 4 (1994) 9-51.