Safran Publishers

Le Platon arabe et les Sabéens de Harran. La "voie diffuse" de la transmission du platonisme en terre d'Islam

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In the absence of integral and litteral Arabic translations of Plato’s dialogues, the transmission of Platonism in the Muslim world was an indirect one, passing through different channels such as medical works, doxographies and gnomologies. The complexity and relative obscurity of this ‘voie diffuse’, in which according to Pierre Thillet oral transmission played an important role, led to all kinds of hazardous speculations about the existence of a Platonic Academy among the “Sabaens” in Ḥarrān, which was supposed to be still in activity in the Xth century. This article proposes a critical analysis of one of the most quoted “evidences” for this theory: al-Mas‘ūdī’s report about a Platonic inscription he claims to have seen on the door-knocker of the maǧma‘ of the Sabaeans in Ḥarrān. Rather than proving the existence of a “Platonic Academy” there, al-Mas‘ūdī offers us an eloquent illustration of the way Platonism was transmitted in the Muslim world.

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La migration du savoir entre les communautés : le cas de la littérature arabe chrétienne

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This paper addresses the important phenomenon of contacts and influences between the various religious communities of the pre-modern Near East in the field of the written heritage, and more particularly in that of Christian Arabic literature. The introduction discusses several examples of such interchange, on the one hand, between the various Christian communities (Melkites, Syrians, Copts) and between various language traditions (Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, Arabic) and on the other hand, between Christian and Muslim intellectual environments. The main part of the paper investigates the textual similarities that can be detected in the works of Sulaymān al-Ġazzī, Melkite bishop of Ghazza in the the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D., and the famous Epistles of the Iḫwān al-Ṣafā’ (Brethren of Purity). Some preliminary suggestions are given for the question as to how such similarities might have come about.

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L’influence du traité "Les airs, les eaux et les lieux" d’Hippocrate chez les penseurs arabes du Moyen Âge

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In this paper, I want to show the influence of the hippocratic treatise On airs, waters, places ((Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, τόπων) and Galen’s commentary in particular, on the arabic scientific literature. Of course, we find it in medicine but also in geography. In this field, the Galen’s commentary of hippocratic text determined the base of the theory of geographical determinism, giving a conceptual structure (physic and even physiological) to the influence of the man’s environment. The mediaeval thinkers applied this theory to the humanity and in this context, the hippocratic opposition between Schythians and Egyptians is replaced by the one between Turks and Egyptians or Slaves and Blacks. They used it also to explain the physical constitution and the ethics of a specific population.

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De Baghdad à Cordoue : une migration de la tradition grammaticale arabe

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The Arabic Grammatical Tradition aims at studying the Kalâm-ʾl-ʿArab or “Language of the Arabs”, relying on texts written before 130/750. ʾAbû ʿAlî al-Qâlî (Manâzgird 280/893 – Cordoba 355/966), after having learnt Arabic grammar in Baghdad, has left the city in 328/939 for teaching in Cordoba from 330/941, applying the principles of Basra Grammatical School Tradition. He wrote several books, but one of them may be considered as typical for this Tradition : “The Book of Shortened and Extended Noun”, a critical edition of which has recently been published by Dr. al-Haridi. Al-Qâlî does no more regard “shortened noun” (ʾism maqṣûr) and “reduced noun” (ʾism manqûṣ) as synonymous as Ancient Grammarians did. In his view, a shortened noun is a noun where a /y/ or a /w/ is included as a radical. He looks for a main structural principle organizing grammatical rules, putting aside the nawâdir or unusual words. So that we may think about him as occupying an intermediary position between Ibn Sarrâǧ and Ibn Ǧinnî in the history of Arabic Grammatical Tradition.

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