(forthcoming)

Philosophy as Wisdom: On the Christians' Role in the Translation of

Philosophical Material to Arabic

Sarah Stroumsa

The impact of the translation movement in shaping the culture of the Islamic world

can best be appreciated by comparing the Islamic world in the post-translation

movement era with the starting point of Islamic culture in the seventh century. A

fairly accurate (though somewhat stereotypical) description of this starting point is

given by the eleventh-century Andalusian historian ÑÁÝid ibn ÑÁÝid al-Andalusī, who

writes in his bio-bibliographical work on the history of science, The Categories of

Nations, as follows:

At the dawn of Islam, the Arabs had no interest in the sciences, except their

language and the knowledge of the rules of their religious law. The [only]

exception to this was the art of medicine, for it was found among individual

Arabs, and their rank and file was not opposed to it, due to the fact that

people were in need of it.1

I wish to express my thanks to the workshop participants for their helpful comments.

In particular, I am grateful to Gad Freudenthal and to Patricia Crone for their incisive

critical reading of a previous draft. I also wish to thank Maria Mavroudi for her

enlightening comments.

ÑÁÝid al-Andalusī, ÓabaqÁt al-umam, ed. Al-ÝÏd BÙ ÝAlwÁn Beirut 1985, pp. 126–127;

compare the translation in ÑÁÝid al-AndalusÐ, Science in the Medieval World: ‘Book

of the Categories of Nations,’ ed. and trans. S. I. Salem and A. Kumar, Austin 1991,

p. 44; D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation

(forthcoming)

This is, as Ibn ÑÁÝid tells us, the situation at the ‘dawn of Islam.’ Four centuries later,

when Ibn ÑÁÝid is writing, the cultural and scientific scene has changed drastically.

The Islamic Arabic empire has become the bastion of philosophy, and it is to a large

extent through the Arabs that, towards the end of the eleventh century, Christian

Europe begins to acquire its knowledge of Greek philosophy. Scholars agree in seeing

the so-called ‘Arabic translation movement’ as playing a crucial role in the change

from the pre-Islamic or early-Islamic philosophy-free Arabia to the science- and

philosophy-conscious Islamic empire. Between the eighth and the tenth centuries, a

vast body of Greek scientific and philosophical texts was translated into Arabic, thus

making significant parts of the Hellenic tradition available to Arabic-speaking

intellectuals. The nature of this movement, however, and the explanation of its

development, had been the subject of several differing accounts. In what follows, I

will summarize briefly what was until recently the standard account of the history of

the movement, and then focus on the examination of its revision, offered a few years

ago by Dimitri Gutas.

The first account is based on several Arabic sources depicting the beginning of

the translation movement as the result of a decisive caliphal move at a clearly defined

point in time, with the ÝAbbÁsid caliph al-MaÝmūn (reigned 813–833) often playing

the central role in this story. Al-MaÝmūn sees Aristotle in a dream, and is moved to

translate the ‘sciences of the ancients,’ that is to say, the sciences and philosophy of

the Greeks. He sends emissaries to Byzantium to hunt for manuscripts and establishes

teams to collate manuscripts and translate them into Arabic, thus making the Greek

Movement in Baghdad and Early ÝAbbÁsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries),

London–New York 1998, p. 31.

(forthcoming)

heritage part of Islamic culture.2 Modern scholarly accounts of the translation

movement often rest on this half-mythical story, and on other, more sober,

descriptions with a similar content in the Arabic sources. According to this narrative,

a large segment of the Muslim ruling class, including the caliphs and their entourage,

became sponsors of the translation movement, subsidizing it and actively legitimizing

the integration of Greek sciences and philosophy into the culture of Islam. The

interest of the caliphs is presented as both practical and scholarly, centred on the

sciences (medicine, but also mathematics and astronomy) and on philosophy (logic,

physics, and metaphysics). In fact, the story of al-MaÝmūn’s dream presents the whole

process as geared towards the study of philosophy.

A central role in this process is played, according to this narrative, by the

Christian inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent, whose tradition includes the study of

philosophy, whether in Greek or in Syriac.

Christian scholars assiduously preserved ancient wisdom in their

schools . . . They were the principal bearers of the classical heritage to

the world of Islam, and it is thanks to their groundwork in textual

2 Ibn AbÐ UÒaybiÝaÝUyÙn al-anbÁÞ fÐ ÔabaqÁt al-aÔÔibÁÞ, Beirut n.d., pp. 259–260. Ibn

NubÁta, SarÎ al-ÝuyÙn fÐ sharÎ risÁlat Ibn ZaydÙn, ed. M. AbÙ al-FaÃl IbrÁhÐm, Cairo

1964, p. 213; MuÎammad Ibn al-NadÐm, KitÁb al-Fihrist, ed. F. Flügel, Leipzig 1871–

1872, p. 243; Gutas, Greek Thought (above, note 1), pp. 95–107; G. Saliba, Islamic

Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, Cambridge, MA 2007, pp. 13,

47–48. ÑÁÝid al-Andalusī does not recount the dream story, and accords al-ManÒÙr

(reigned 754–775) primacy an interest in science and philosophy. In his account too,

however, al-MaÝmūn is presented as the person who initiated the actual translation

movement; cf. ÑÁÝid al-Andalusī, ÓabaqÁt al-umam (above, note 1), pp. 128–129.

(forthcoming)

editing and translating that philosophy could be pursued by medieval

Muslim and Jewish thinkers.3

The Christians are thus presented as the custodians of Greek heritage, those who

preserved the texts, copied them, and had the skills required for translations, skills

cultivated and preserved in the monasteries and the Christian academies.4 They are

seen not just as the technicians who had the know-how, but also as the active

promoters of these translations. Their primary motivation, we are told, was the desire

to advance what they had come to regard as their own heritage under new political

and cultural circumstances, ‘injecting “foreign” ideas into the ideological stream of

the dominant Muslim majority, in an apparent attempt to elude their own

marginality.’5

3 J. L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, Leiden 1992, pp. 76–77.

4 For brevity’s sake I generally refer in this article to ‘the Christians’ as one religious

community. A thorough and detailed analysis of the Christian role in the translation

movement, however, must differentiate between the various Christian communities—

East Syrian, West Syrian, and Byzantine—and their different traditions and attitudes.

On the schools in Edessa and Nisibis, see A. H. Becker, Fear of God and the

Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Christian

Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Philadelphia 2006, passim.

5 See Kraemer, Humanism (above, note 3), p. 77, who relies on R. M. Haddad, Syrian

Christians in Muslim Society, Princeton 1970; cf. Haddad, pp. 4–5, 13. See also

Walzer, Greek into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy, Oxford 1962, pp. 6–7; F.

E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam, New York

1968, pp. 15–27; Idem, 'The Greek and Syriac Background,' in S. H. Nasr and O.

Leaman (eds.), History of Islamic Philosophy, vol. 1, London–New York 1996, pp.

(forthcoming)

A drastic revision, which can be seen as an antithesis to the standard

narrative, was offered some years ago by Dimitri Gutas, who rightly assumes that it

takes more than a ruler's dream to make possible a translation movement on such a

scale, and who does not think it was simply a case of the Christians promoting

classical heritage. He argues forcefully and convincingly that an undertaking of this

magnitude, lasting over two centuries, must be analysed as a comprehensive social

phenomenon, and he therefore looks for the social setting which nourished and

supported the movement. Although he acknowledges the fundamental role of Syriac

Christians in the translation movement, he considers their achievements to be those of

individual ‘international scholars,’ and in his view, their activities and concerns are

apparently not sufficient to be counted as a significant component of this social

setting.6

Furthermore, the legacy on which those individual Christian transmitters

could draw was far more limited than the standard account would have it. Gutas aims

at correcting what he sees as ‘a widespread misconception in the majority of works

dealing with the transmission of Greek knowledge into Arabic, that this was effected

on the basis of pre-existing Syriac translation.’ He points out that ‘before the

ÝAbbÁsids, relatively few secular Greek works had been translated into Syriac’ and

that although

40–51; L. E. Goodman, 'The Translation of Greek Materials into Arabic,' in M. J. L.

Young et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Religion, Learning

and Science in the ÝAbbasid Period, Cambridge 1990, pp. 477–497; F. Rosenthal, The

Classical Heritage in Islam, London 1992, pp. 1–14.

6 Gutas, Greek Thought (above, note 1), pp. 1–3, 16.

(forthcoming)

the Syriac-speaking Christians contributed much of the indispensable

technical skill for the Graeco-Arabic translation movement . . . the initiative,

scientific direction and management of the movement were provided by . . . a

context created by early ÝAbbÁsid society.7

That the social context was indeed created by early ÝAbbÁsid society is of

course true, proven by the very fact that the large-scale, continuous translation effort,

which deserves the name ‘movement,’ appeared only then, and not before.8 Gutas also

shows very convincingly that the story of the Aristotelian dream ‘was concocted to

justify al-MaÝmÙn’s rationalistic and pro-MuÝtazilÐ policy.’9 Rather than explaining

the start of the translation movement, the dream story provides the later, post-factum

narrative for the canonization of a well-established movement.10

Gutas points to the

prominence of astrology in the earliest translations, and argues that the interest in

translating philosophical texts belongs to a later stage of the movement.11

Emphasizing the paramount role played at the beginning of the movement by Iranians

who converted to Islam from Zoroastrianism, rather than by Christians, Gutas

distinguishes several stages in the development of the movement and argues that the

specific conditions of each stage determined the texts chosen for translation. In all

stages, however, the role of the Christians in general, and of the monasteries in

7 Ibid., pp. 21–22.

8 This does not preclude the existence of earlier initiatives to translate into Arabic

under the Umayyads; see, for instance, the discussion in Saliba, Islamic Science

(above, note 2), pp. 45–49.

9 Ibid., p. 101.

10 Ibid., pp. 100–104.

11 Ibid., p. 108.

(forthcoming)

particular, must be cut down to size: since the Christians lacked the necessary

expertise before the movement began, they could not have been its initiators and its

driving force, and their contributions could have been only limited.12

For Gutas, the

translation movement’s distinguishing features are its secular, universalistic character,

which reflects Iranian tradition and the imperial ideology of the Sasanians. Believing

that Alexander the Great had scattered their wisdom to the four corners of the earth,

the Sasanians saw themselves as legitimate heirs to all human wisdom and assumed

the role of collectors and custodians of what they regarded as their own retrieved

legacy. For this purpose they established the ‘House of Wisdom,’ which the ÝAbbÁsids

then imitated by establishing their own bayt al-Îikma.13

The Christians of early Islam,

on the other hand, had a narrow, orthodox, benighted religious culture. Byzantium

was going through the Dark Ages, and the monasteries living under the spell of

Byzantium did not possess the intellectual or even the philological capacity to embark

on a secular initiative such as the translation movement.14

In his attempt to capture the social context of the translation movement,

Gutas paints a panoramic view of early ÝAbbÁsid society, a magisterial achievement

which finally makes sense of the movement in non-mythical terms. Gutas’s analysis

has changed the way modern scholarship discusses the translation movement and his

position has been widely accepted. Although he carefully cites the evidence regarding

the Christian, and especially Syriac-Christian role, his overall interpretation of this

evidence completely dethrones the Christians and grants them only a marginal,

12 Ibid., pp. 138, 141.

13 Ibid., pp. 53–60.

14 Ibid., pp. 13–16, 18, 21–22, 137–138, 141. Regarding the Christians living under

Sasanian rule, and the monasteries there, see further below.

(forthcoming)

secondary position, and at times even less than that.15

Notwithstanding the merit of

his insightful analysis, in the intricate picture of the various elements that contributed

to the translation movement, the place accorded to the Christians in Gutas’s narrative

is, in my view, on the whole too insignificant. The balance needs to be readjusted,

which I shall try to do in what follows.

My first point concerns the degree to which we may speak of secular culture in

the period under review. Narratives, by nature, connect the various pieces of evidence

and try to make sense of them, combining them into a coherent story. In our quest to

tell the story of the translation movement, adhering to a correct terminology is of the

essence. As underlined in the title of a scholarly volume published a generation ago,

the heyday of Islam was a religious age.16

By having recourse to the modern

distinction between religious and secular, we run the risk ofprejudicing our reading in

ways that may lead to anachronistic interpretations.

In the period under discussion, between the second/eighth and the fourth/

tenth centuries, no group—Christians or Jews, Zoroastrians or Muslims—can be

considered typically secular. The court culture provided some space that we can call

‘secular’ and even cultivated it, but even there, the shadow of religious authorities

15 Becker, who notes ‘Gutas’ downplaying of the role of the Syriac Christians in the

translation process,’ suggests that this downplaying ‘is no doubt merely an

overcompensation for the previous scholarly diachronic focus’; Becker, Fear of God

(above, note 4), p. 219, note 97.

16 Cf. S. D. Goitein (ed.), Religion in a Religious Age, Proceedings of Regional

Conferences Held at the University of California, Los Angeles and Brandeis

University in April, 1973, Cambridge, MA 1974.

(forthcoming)

was never far away. The Islamic state may well have been ‘a non-partisan overlord’ to

the various Christian denominations,17

but the non-partisanship was a very thin veneer

in a basically religious society, as can be seen in the Islamic state’s partisan approach

to Islam. It may well have freed Christian scholars from orthodox supervision within

Christianity, but it is misleading to suggest that there was no ‘need to pay heed to any

official version of “orthodoxy,” whatever the religion.’18

The translation period, Gutas

argues, was ‘a formative period, in which no religious view has crystallized to an

extent that it could be called “Orthodoxy,”’ and the dichotomy between reason and

faith is, for him, ‘a distinctly Western theologoumenon that has nothing to do with

Islamic realities.’19

Taken together, such statements suggest a relatively secular ÝAbbÁsid Islam

in which religious factors are played down and the existence of not one, but many,

contenders for orthodoxy is ignored. This is going too far. Take the oft-quoted words

of the philosopher al-KindÐ (d. 870), who admonishes the caliph al-MuÝtaÒim,

attributing to Aristotle the following saying:

We ought not to be ashamed of appreciating the truth and of acquiring it

wherever it comes from, even if it comes from races distant and nations

17 Cf. Gutas, Greek Thought (above, note 1), p. 13.

18 Ibid., p.15.

19 Ibid., p. 158. See below, note 24. The underlying effort to dissociate from ‘the

West’ is noteworthy; see further M. Mavroudi, ‘An Umayyad Bath and its Cultural

Background,’ Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2006, pp. 731–738 (a review of G.

Fowden, QuÒsayr ÝAmra: Art and the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique Syria, Berkeley

2004), especially pp. 737–738.

(forthcoming)

different from us. For the seeker of truth nothing takes precedence over the

truth.20

This part of al-KindÐ’s enlightened observation is quoted by Gutas, together

with a similar exhortation by al-KindÐ’s contemporary Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), to prove

the existence of ‘a richly textured society’ in which ‘well-defined boundaries around

intellectual and ideological positions had not . . . been drawn, and no movement or set

of beliefs had managed to gain a clearly dominant position.’21

Although the society

was certainly richly textured, one cannot avoid noticing al-KindÐ’s defensive tone in

this passage (‘we ought not be ashamed . . . ’), which already suggests that there was

some powerful opposition with which he had to contend. Al-KindÐ, however,

continues his admonition beyond this passage of enraptured universalism, promising

to adhere in his book to this lofty principle as much a possible,

in spite of the disadvantage affecting us in this of being restrained from (going

into) an extended discussion (necessary) to solve difficult, ambiguous

problems; (and) while being wary of the bad interpretation of many of those

who are in our day acclaimed for speculation, (but) who are strangers to the

truth even if they are enthroned undeservedly with the crowns of truth,

20

A. L. Ivry (trans.), Al-Kindi's Metaphysics: A Translation of the Treatise on First

Philosophy?, Albany 1974, p. 58 [; KitÁb al-KindÐ ilÁ al-MuÝtaÒim biÞllÁh fÐÞl-falsafa

al-ÙlÁ, ed. R. Rashed and J. Jolivet, in Métaphysique et cosmologie, vol. 2 of Œuvres

philosophiques et scientifiques d’al-KindÐ, ed. R. Rashed and J. Jolivet, Leiden, 1998,

p. 13; M. AbÙ RÐda, ed., RasÁÞl al-KindÐ al-falsafiyya, Cairo, 1950, p. 103.

21 Gutas, Greek Thought (above, note 1), pp. 158–159.

(forthcoming)

because of their narrow understanding of the methods of truth and their scant

knowledge of what befits the august (scholar).22

Al-KindÐ continues his diatribe, and it takes him a few lines to get to his target:

(They are strangers to the truth) also due to the dirty envy which controls their

animal souls, and which, by darkening its veils, obscures their thought’s

perception from the light of truth; and due to their considering those with

human virtue . . . as audacious, harmful opponents; thereby defending their

spurious thrones which they installed undeservedly for the purpose of gaining

leadership and traffic in religion, though they are devoid of religion . . . One

who trades in religion does not have religion, and it is right that one who

resists the acquisition of knowledge of the real nature of things and calls it

unbelief be divested of (the offices of religion).23

In these last lines, al-KindÐ is pointing an accusing finger at some Muslim religious

authorities, whose influence on the caliph he attempts to counterbalance. Although he

carefully avoids mentioning names, his audacity in openly criticizing religious Islamic

bigotry is remarkable. His targets are not merely one component among many in a

richly textured society; they are powerful people, trying to preserve their position of

power (‘their thrones’), and their claim to present an orthodox Islamic position

endangers the enlightened attempts of philosophers like al-KindÐ, or of open-minded

thinkers like Ibn Qutayba. Moreover, they claim that the search for knowledge as

advocated by al-KindÐ amounts to unbelief. Although al-KindÐ struggles to show that

religion and (philosophical) knowledge are not incompatible, his own lengthy

22

Ivry, Al-KindÐ’s Metaphysics (above, note 20), p. 58; cf. Rashed and Jolivet,

Métaphysique (above, note 21), pp. 12–15.

23 Ivry, Al-KindÐ’s Metaphysics (above, note 20), pp. 58–59 (emphasis mine).

(forthcoming)

apologia clearly demonstrates that he had powerful opponents who saw faith and

philosophy as contradictory.24

We do not know who these opponents were: for all we

know, they may have been MuÝtazilites, themselves ardent proponents of the

agreement of faith and reason. It is, nevertheless, obvious that their milieu cannot be

described as religiously neutral.

The astounding success of the translation movement stands out precisely

because it arose in a non-secular society prone to orthodoxy. The religious character

of this society was not limited to obscurantist clerics; it informed the writings of

enlightened intellectuals as well as the edicts of caliphs, as the cases mentioned by

Gutas himself, when closely examined, amply demonstrate. The ninth-century

rationalist theologian al-JÁÎiÛ presents a scathingly critical picture of Christian and

Jewish bigotry. His criticism of the Christians, however (incorporated in his polemical

Radd ÝalÁ al-NaÒÁrÁ), is not only a piece of ÝAbbÁsid propaganda, as Gutas argues, but

24 This dichotomy is attested in many texts: it is presented, for example, by the tenth-

century Muslim philosopher AbÙ SulaymÁn al-SijistÁnÐ, whose criticism of the

‘Brethren of Purity’ is quoted by Gutas, Greek Thought (above, note 1), pp. 163–164.

SijistÁnÐ juxtaposes philosophy with the sharÐÝa (rendered by Gutas as ‘Islamic law’),

but the different terminology reveals the same tensions. Cf. also E. Rowson, A

Muslim Philosopher on the Soul and its Fate: Al-ÝÀmirÐ's KitÁb al-Amad ÝalÁ l-abad,

New Haven 1988, pp. 17–29.

On al-KindÐ’s role in the translation of philosophy, see G. Endress, ‘The Circle

of al-KindÐ,’ in G. Endress and R. Kruk (eds.), The Ancient Tradition in Christian and

Islamic Hellenism: Studies on the Transmission of Greek Philosophy and Sciences,

Dedicated to H. J. Drossaart Lulofs on his Ninetieth Birthday, Leiden 1997, pp. 43–

76.

(forthcoming)

also a genuine religious polemic, and must be read as such.25

During al-JÁÎiÛ’s

lifetime, the caliph al-MaÞmÙn introduced the miÎna in an attempt to impose a

religious doctrine—the doctrine of the created QurÞÁn—as state dogma. Al-MaÞmÙn’s

successors, al-MuÝtamid (in 892–893) and al-MuÝtaÃid (in 897), both introduced

restrictions on the sales of works of philosophy and kalÁm.26

Gutas’s interpretation of

these restrictions as strictly administrative, meant solely to preserve law and order and

devoid of any doctrinal background, is bewildering, as it leaves unexplained both the

sudden urge to preserve the public order and the conviction that this can be achieved

by censorship of rationalist books.27

In all likelihood, these restrictions reflect the way

the caliphs played their different cards: In times of war or rising military tensions, the

rulers needed the support of religious leaders, whom they hoped to placate by

introducing restrictions on the sales of religiously suspect books. Such caliphal moves

are not uncommon in the Islamic world, and although they are certainly political, they

belong to the realm of religious, rather than secular, politics.28

They presuppose the

25 Compare Gutas, Greek Thought (above, note 1), pp. 85–90.

26 On al-MaÞmÙn’s miÎna, see, for instance, J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im

2. und 3. Jahhudert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen

Islam, vol. 3, Berlin–New York, 1992, pp. 446–456.

27 Ibid., pp. 161–162, quoting al-ÓabarÐ, TaÞrÐkh, vol. 2, 2131 and 2165]in de Goeje’s

edition; cf. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. 4 (above, note 26), pp. 728–729.

28 Similar moves can be discerned at the other end of the Islamic empire, for example,

with the persecution of the MasarrÐs of Cordoba by al-NÁÒir in the tenth century, in

response to the increased FÁÔimid threat; cf. M. Fierro, ‘Los MÁlikies de al-Andalus y

los dos árbitros (al-ÎakamÁn),’ Al-QanÔara 6 (1985), pp. 79–102; S. Stroumsa, ‘Ibn

Masarra and the Beginnings of Mystical Thought in al-Andalus,’ in P. Schaefer (ed.),

(forthcoming)

existence of an influential segment of society that objects to the spread of philosophy

and rational theology and regards it as opposed to religious orthodoxy. Such groups

were strong enough to threaten the stability of the caliph’s rule, and their displeasure

with philosophy must be considered a characteristic trait of ÝAbbÁsid Islam. Muslims

in general, and the caliphs sponsoring the translation movement in particular, were not

free from religious considerations; if one is to understand the social context of the

translation movement, the profoundly religious character of this society must not be

overlooked.

The same applies to the Sasanians, who cultivated science and philosophy as

part of their imperial ideology. It would be misleading to associate this activity,

driven by national pride and closely associated with Zoroastrian notions, with

anything secular in the modern sense of this word. The Christians of this period were

probably neither more nor less inclined to religious, dogmatic considerations than the

Muslims and Zoroastrians. The assumption that a truly open-minded, avid intellectual

thirst of the kind that characterized the translation movement presupposes secular

Mystical Approaches to God: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Munich 2006, pp. 97–

112, note 14.

Another example is the demotion and exile of the philosopher Ibn Rushd in

1197–1198, after defeats suffered by the Muslims in battles against the Christians in

the twelfth century; cf. M. A. MakkÐ, ‘Contribución de Averroes a la ciencia jurídica

musulmana,’ in A. Martínez Lorca (ed.), Al encuentro de Averroes, Madrid 1993, pp.

15–38, especially p. 16; E. Tornero Poveda, ‘La Filosofía,’ in El retroceso territorial

de al-Andalus: Almorávides y almohades, Siglos XI al XIII, vol. 8:2 of Historia de

España fundada por R. Menéndez Pidal y dirigida por J. M. Jover Zamora, coord. por

M. J. VigueraMadrid 1997, pp. 587–602, especially p. 595.

(forthcoming)

inclination necessarily precludes its presence in the Christian monasteries. But it is

highly questionable whether the Christian monasteries' orthodoxy stood in the way of

philosophical interest. The evidence, in fact, points to the contrary.

Gutas points to the fact that in the translation movement, philosophical texts

came last.29

For the caliphs, philosophy was legitimate when it could be presented as

in some way practical. Gutas also highlights the role of mawÁlÐ in translating material

that would reaffirm their old culture, and the desire of the ÝAbbÁsids to consolidate

their position as rulers by assuming the Sasanid image of master of cultures. These

motivations indeed help to explain the investment in translation. The motivation of

either converts or caliphs does not, however, explain the development of interest in

philosophy, which remains enigmatically described as an internal development of the

translation movement. Indeed, to understand the interest in philosophy, one needs the

Christians.

For Christians living under non-Christian rule, logic had a vitally important

role as a major tool for inter-Christian debates as well as for apologetics in an inter-

religious context. The Christians honed the use of this tool in internal disputations

before the advent of Islam, and they had no reason to shelve it after the rise of Islam.30

They continued to use it, as it was only natural to do. John Wansbrough has coined

the term ‘sectarian milieu’ to describe the intellectual and religious environment in

which early Islam developed. Characteristic of the sectarian milieu is ‘the

29 Gutas, Greek Thought (above, note 1),., pp. 101–104, 108, 119–120.

30 On the pre-Islamic ‘cosmopolitan tradition of disputation that developed no both

sides of the Byzantine-Sasanian border,’ and on the role of logic in these disputations,

see J. T. Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in

Late Antique Iraq, Berkeley–Los Angeles–London 2006, pp. 169–180, 185–87.

(forthcoming)

proliferation of hardly distinguishable confessional groups.’ In this milieu, ‘separate

sects [are] generated by points of doctrine,’ each sect defining its own orthodoxy.

Theologically, these groups have much in common, yet they brand each other as

heretical for seemingly minor points of disagreement.31

Paraphrasing this term,

Sidney Griffith has suggested the term ‘heresiographical milieu’ to describe its effect

on intra-Christian texts.32

In this milieu, the tools of discussion—first and foremost

logic—became weapons for convincing, converting, gaining power.

The use of logic, and in its wake philosophy and the sciences, was thus far

from typical of what we would call secular thought. They were introduced into the

curriculum of the Christian academies, where they were studied, copied, translated.

To be sure, the intensity of the interest and of the scholarly commitment varied: there

were no doubt attempts to restrict the use of philosophy to the minimum. The normal

course of study in the Christian curriculum stopped with Anal. Prior. I. 7, as attested

by various accounts as well as by the manuscript evidence.33

While the first books of

31 John E. Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic

Salvation History, Oxford 1978, pp. 98, 146.

32 Sidney Griffith, ‘“Melkites,” “Jacobites” and the Christological Controversies in

Arabic in Third/Ninth Century Syria,’ in David Thomas (ed.), Syrian Christians under

Islam: The First Thousand Years, Leiden–Boston–Köln 2001, pp. 9–55, especially p.

9, n. 1.

33 Cf. F. E. Peters, Aristoteles Arabus: The Oriental Translations and

Commentaries on the Aristotelian Corpus, Leiden 1968, pp. 1–18; H.

Hugonnard-Roche, ‘Les secondes analytiques: Traductions syriaques,’ in R.

Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques, Paris 1989, vol. 1, pp.

(forthcoming)

the Organon were considered to be ‘beginners' logic’ and essential for educated

theologians, the rest of the Aristotelian corpus was reserved for advanced students,

who studied them independently rather than in supervised reading with a teacher.34

It

is also possible that the indulgence in some of these more advanced texts was frowned

upon by ecclesiastic authorities, as AbÙ NaÒr al-FÁrÁbÐ claims. According to al-FÁrÁbÐ,

the Christian ecclesiastic authorities actually forbade the study of some of these

texts.35

As I have argued elsewhere, al-FÁrÁbÐ’s claim of active Christian censorship

reflects his anti-Christian bias, probably nurtured by his frustrations among his

Christian colleagues in Baghdad.36

Al-FÁrÁbÐ recounts his own philosophical

education (achieved through uncorrupted Christian teachers) in order to highlight his

520–521; A. Elamarani-Jamal, ‘Tradition arabe,’ in Goulet, Dictionnaire des

Philosophes Antiques, vol. 1, pp. 521–524.

34 Cf. S. Stroumsa, ‘Al-FÁrÁbÐ and Maimonides on the Christian Philosophical

Tradition: A Re-evaluation,’ Der Islam, 68 (1991), pp. 263–287; D. Gutas, ‘The

“Alexandria to Baghdad” Complex of Narratives: A Contribution to the Study

of Philosophical and Medical Historiography among the Arabs,’ Documenti e

studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 10 (1999), pp. 155–193, especially

pp. 164–167.

35 Cf. Ibn AbÐ UÒaybiÝa, ÝUyÙn al-anbÁÞ (above, note 2) pp. 604–605.

36 Cf. Stroumsa, ‘Al-FÁrÁbÐ and Maimonides on the Christian Philosophical

Tradition,’ (above, note 34); compare Gutas, ‘The “Alexandria to Baghdad”

Complex,’ (above, note 34). These frustrations were convincingly outlined by M.

Mahdi in his unpublished lecture on ‘Al-FÁrÁbÐ and ÝAbbÁsid Political Order,’

delivered in March 1995 at the Israel Academy of Sciences in Jerusalem as the annual

Shlomo Pines Memorial Lecture.

(forthcoming)

claim that philosophy and logic were not well served by the Christians, who were

prone to be distracted by religious preoccupations. In his construction of the narrative

of the teaching of philosophy, al-FÁrÁbÐ is wrestling with the Christians’ identification

as sole custodians of philosophy, an identification which, as the very construction of

his argument shows, was well established in his time.37

Notwithstanding al-FÁrÁbÐ’s bias, we may accept it as true that some

Christians were concerned about the possible negative effect that the study of

philosophy might have on their flock’s faith. There were, however, also those who

weaved the two together, allowing philosophy as much space as the Muslims did after

them. A case in point is the translation of Aristotle's Topics (kitÁb al-jadal),

commissioned by the Nestorian Patriarch Timotheus I, at the behest of the ÝAbbÁsid

caliph al-Mahdī (d. 785). Gutas sees this translation in the context of al-MahdÐ's

campaign against the zanÁdiqa, whom ‘al-Mahdī took very seriously because of the

37 In ‘The “Alexandria to Baghdad” Complex’ (above, note 34), Gutas shows the

primacy of medical sources in the complex of texts narrating the history of the

philosophical curriculum but ignores the shift in the texts’ tenor when they are re-

constructed by al-FÁrÁbÐ. What Gutas (pp. 186–187) elegantly describes as al-FÁrÁbÐ’s

‘style of composition,’ which ‘consisted of fine-tuning transmitted or translated texts

to make them more explicit,’ is in fact the point where al-FÁrÁbÐ introduced his anti-

Christian bias into the received narrative. Maimonides belongs in this complex

precisely because he distills al-FÁrÁbÐ’s ‘philosophical’ narrative from its original

medical context, thus allowing us a clearer view of its anti-Christian purpose. Cf.

Stroumsa, ‘Al-FÁrÁbÐ and Maimonides on the Christian Philosophical Tradition’

(above, note 34); and compare Gutas, ‘The Alexandria to Baghdad Complex,’

especially n. 6.

(forthcoming)

Persian revivalist trends they represented.’ The caliph thus looked for ‘a handbook in

Arabic that would teach the art of argumentation and disputation.’38

Without disputing

this claim, if one accepts the historicity of what our sources tell us about the exchange

between Timotheus and the caliph,39

one cannot ignore the main thrust of these

sources: that this book was hard to come by, that the only place where it could

reasonably be expected to be found was in the monasteries, and that thus the only

person to turn to was the Christian patriarch. Moreover, the Topics, as Gutas rightly

observes, is ‘hardly light reading’ and does not become lighter by being renamed a

handbook. It did not belong to the ‘beginners’ logic’ taught at the Christian academies

in Nisibis or Judinshapur, which, as mentioned above, stopped before the Analytica

Posteriora. For that matter, it does not seem to appear in the list of early Sasanian

translations. And yet the Nestorian patriarch was able to procure it, and the meager

evidence that we have testifies to its existence not only in Greek but also in Syriac, in

the translation of Athanasius of Balad (d. 696).40

The story of the translation of the

Topics thus seems to reaffirm the role of the Christians as custodians of philosophical

38

Gutas, Greek Thought (above, note 1), pp. 61–67.

39 As Gutas does. Gutas also seems to accept the historicity of the debate between

them. Such debates, although common, soon became also a common literary topos; cf.

H. Lazarus-Yafeh et al. (eds.), The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval

Islam, Wiesbaden 1999. The historicity of this particular debate remains, therefore,

questionable, as do all individual accounts of debates between Christian prelates and

Muslim dignitaries.

40 Peters, Aristoteles Arabus (above, note 33), pp. 20–23 ; S. Brock, ‘The Syriac

Commentary Tradition,’ in C. Burnett (ed.), Glosses and Commentaries on

Aristotelian Logical Texts, London 1993, pp. 3–15.

(forthcoming)

texts: there were Christians in the monasteries who were interested in its preservation,

just as there were people in al-MahdÐ’s entourage who were interested and able to

understand it.

In the scholarly attempts to reconstruct the transmission of philosophy to the

Arabs, an important place is given to Paul the Persian, a Nestorian Christian from

Nisibis or Jundisahpur who flourished in the second half of the sixth century.

Attaching himself to the court of the famous patron of philosophy, Chosroes

AnushirwÁn, Paul authored several philosophical commentaries. As Gutas has shown

in an illuminating article, these commentaries reflect the Alexandrian school tradition

and follow its curriculum, from the required set of prolegomena to the commentaries

themselves. Barhebraeus, writing in the thirteenth century and basing himself

probably on the anonymous chronicle of Séert, claims that Paul ‘embraced

Zoroastrianism because his ambition for ecclesiastical preferment was thwarted.’41

To Gutas, Paul's conversion is symptomatic of the cultural dichotomy of his

time: between ‘the sclerotic effect of the traditionally established subject for

discussion’ and ‘the social and religious constraints’ of the Syriac school tradition, on

the one hand, and the court of AnushirwÁn, where ‘the weight of tradition and these

constraints were evidently not present,’ on the other.42

He further reinforces this

41

A. Scher (ed.), The Chronicle of Se'ert, Paris 1911 [Patrologia Orientalis VII.147];

Barhebraeus, Chron. Eccles., vol. 3, p. 97; S. Pines, ‘Ahmad Miskawayh and Paul the

Persian,’ IrÁn-ShinÁsī, 2 (1971), pp. 120–129, especially p. 124; Gutas, ‘Paul the

Persian on the Classification of the Parts of Aristotle's Philosophy: A Milestone

between Alexandria and Baghdad,’ Der Islam, 60 (1983), pp. 231–267, especially pp.

238–239.

42 Gutas, ‘Paul the Persian’ (above, note 41), pp. 249–250.

(forthcoming)

dichotomy by associating Paul with al-FÁrÁbÐ's contention that the Christians

deliberately censored the study of philosophy by forbidding the teaching of the

Analytica Posteriora, regarded as a danger to religion. Paul, like al-FÁrÁbÐ, describes

the Analytica Posteriora as ‘the noblest’ book of the Organon, and Gutas regards both

this description and Paul's supposed conversion to Zoroastrianism as proofs of his

distancing himself from the Christian tradition. For Gutas, this particular introduction

and Paul’s conversion are closely linked, the content of the one reflecting the other.

Shlomo Pines, in his article on Ahmad Miskawayh and Paul the Persian,

expresses doubts concerning this conversion, but scholars from Ernest Renan43

to

Javier Teixidor44

and Gutas45

assume the assertion to be correct. According to Gutas,

There has been a continuous tendency among scholars to doubt the

veracity of this report, but no arguments in support of this doubt have

ever been brought forward.46

Pines's doubt deserves, however, to be taken seriously, and I would like to suggest an

argument to support it, from Paul's own method of working. Paul's introduction to his

commentary on the Categories, dedicated to Chosroes AnushirwÁn, is preserved in

43 E. Renan, De Philosophia Peripatetica apud Syros, Paris 1852, pp. 19–22.

44 J. Teixidor, Aristote en Syriaque: Paul le Perse, logicien du VIe siècle, Paris 2003,

pp. 27 and 31. In an earlier study, however, Teixidor dismisses the conversion as a

topos; cf. ‘Science versus foi chez Paul le Perse. Une note,’ in Jean-Pierre Mahé and

Robert W. Thomson (eds.), From Byzantium to Iran: Armenian Studies in Honour of

Nina Garsoian, Atlanta 1996, 509n. I am indebted to Patricia Crone for this reference.

45 Gutas, ‘Paul the Persian’ (above, note 41), p. 238.

46 Ibid., p. 250, n. 43.

(forthcoming)

Syriac, although it may have been originally written in Pahlavi. In the first lines of the

introduction Paul says:

Philosophy, which is the best of all gifts, reveals itself in speech.

Philosophy itself says of Philosophy: ‘My fruit is better than gold, yes,

than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver.’47

Paul then compares wisdom, the spiritual eye, to the corporeal eye without which one

cannot find one's way, and adds:

It was thus truly said by one of the philosophers: ‘The wise man's eyes are

in his head; but the fool walks in darkness.’48

The words which Paul attributes to ‘Philosophy itself’ are actually a quotation from

the book of Proverbs, where Wisdom compares her fruit to precious metals.49

Similarly, the words Paul attributes to ‘one of the philosophers’ are a quotation from

Ecclesiastes, traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, ‘the wisest of all men.’50

Paul

thus puts forward the biblical texts of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to support his claim

for the importance of philosophy. Although Paul does not explicitly cite the Bible, the

47

Cf. J. P. N. Land (ed.), Anecdota Syriaca 4, Leiden 1875, reprinted Jerusalem 1971,

p. 1.

48 Ibid.

49 The reference is to Prov. 8:19 (and not 1:19, as noted mistakenly in the edition); cf.

also H. Hugonnard-Roche, ‘Le traité de logique de Paul le Perse: une interpretation

tardo-antique de la logique aristotélicienne en Syriaque,’ Documenti e studi sulla

tradizione filosofica medievale: Rivista della Società internazionale per lo studio del

Medioevo latino, 11 (2000), pp. 59–82, especially p. 60 and n. 5.

50 Cf. Eccl. 2:14; cf. also Hugonnard-Roche, ‘Le traité de logique de Paul le Perse’

(above, note 49), p. 63.

(forthcoming)

first quotation was correctly identified by the editor of the text as well as by Renan.

But the ambivalence of the words ‘wisdom,’ which indicates also philosophy, and

‘sage,’ which indicates also philosopher, seems to have obliterated the importance of

the source for some.51

The presence of such quotations in the introduction to the

translation belies, I believe, the contention of Barhebraeus that Paul converted to

Zoroastrianism. This introduction shows that for Paul, exegesis and logic are closely

linked. Logic serves as the instrument by which the revealed texts should be read and

interpreted, and the biblical texts themselves tell us so. Moreover, even if we were to

argue that Paul could have converted to Zoroastrianism, and that the introduction

preserves the memory of his previous education, the significance of the text for our

purposes would remain the same: it shows the Christian legacy of combining exegesis

and logic as the backbone of Paul's teaching. Far from promoting a secular

philosophy, Paul introduces logic to the Sasanian ruler as indistinguishable from the

biblical wisdom. His quotation of the biblical verse is not a mere ornament; it betrays

his almost intuitive identification of what he reads in the Bible with the teaching of

Aristotle.

51

Renan notes that, like the Alexandrians before him, Paul employs biblical citations

to confirm the definitions of philosophy, but he does not see the contradiction

between this fact and the claim that Paul converted to Zoroastrianism. Teixidor

wholly ignores the biblical source. Cf. also Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh

(above, note 31), pp. 184–185. Hugonnard-Roche, on the other hand, spells out both

the biblical source and its value as attesting to Paul’s Christianity, without discussing

the question of his conversion; see Hugonnard-Roche, ‘Le traité de logique de Paul le

Perse’ (above, note 49), p. 60.

(forthcoming)

It is certainly true that the Sasanian court gave Paul room for developing his

philosophical inclinations. This he did, however, as a Christian, drawing from his

Christian tradition. He lists the differences in religions, only to dismiss them as

immaterial, and suggests that all religions are equivalent (a conciliatory tactic which

was often adopted by members of minorities in inter-religious contexts).52

And he

preaches the advantage of proven knowledge over unstudied faith (as theologians

often do when arguing for the need to use logic in a religious context).53

In so doing

Paul does not become a secular rationalist, nor does he reject his religious tradition in

favour of another. Rather than distancing himself from this tradition, he deftly weaves

his Christian heritage into the dedication to the Sasanian king. To the extent that Paul

the Persian is indeed a most significant link in the transmission of philosophy to the

Arabs, it is important to note the integration, rather than the opposition, of the

Sasanian and the Christian traditions.

The conscious attempt to weave together the Hellenic and scriptural traditions

is not particular to Paul, and is not reserved to logic. Another typical example can be

seen in the works of the ninth-century physician Seharbokht, the son of Mesargis,

who is probably to be identified as MÁsarjawaih of the Arabic texts. As Gerrit Reinink

52 See, for instance, the reaction of Ibn Íazm's Jewish interlocutors, cf. J. van Ess,

‘Disputationspraxis in der islamischen Theologie, eine vorläufige Skizze,’ Revue des

Etudes Islamiques, 44 (1976), pp. 23–60, especially p. 47; S. Stroumsa, Freethinkers

of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-RÁwandÐ, AbÙ Bakr al-RÁzÐ, and Their Impact on Islamic

Thought, Leiden 1999, p. 108.

53 See, for instance, Saadia's introduction to his KitÁb al-amÁnÁt wa'l-iÝtiqÁdÁt, where

iÝtiqÁd—reasoned and understood knowledge—is presented as superior to

unquestioned belief.

(forthcoming)

has suggested, ‘one of the main reasons why Seharbokht made medicine the ally of

theology in his biblical commentaries and teaching may have been his intention to

demonstrate that his Christian religion was in perfect harmony with Greek science,

and that Scripture in no way conflicted with reason and Greek wisdom.’54

Indeed,

both Seharbokht and MÁsarjawaih before him belonged to the school of medicine in

Jundishapur, a school that, as Reinink shows, has its roots in the fifth and even fourth

centuries. Seharbokht, like Paul, testifies to the continuous study of theology and

science by the Christian Nestorians, in Nisibis as well as in Jundishapur.55

Conclusion

The wave of translations of Greek texts to Arabic, known as the ‘Arabic translation

movement,’ is often presented as one round in a relay race that carried the legacy of

Greek antiquity onwards, up to our own libraries. This is not a good way of seeing it,

nor is it Gutas's, but it has left its mark in our tendency to see the translation

movement in terms of a single or at least a main line of transmission. The scholarly

philological tradition which demanded supervised transmission from master to

disciple also encouraged the linear narrative, and it is predominant already in the

Arabic sources. In the older classical narrative, the line passed from the Greek to the

Syriac Christians, and from them to the Muslims. In Gutas's account it is the Persians

who form the main link in this line. As mentioned above, Gutas’s analysis has been

widely accepted, and with it his emphasis on the centrality of the Sasanian impact and

54 Gerrit J. Reinink, ‘Theology and Medicine in Jundishapur: Cultural Change

in the Nestorian School Tradition,’ in Alasdair A. MacDonald et al. (eds.),

Learned Antiquity: Scholarship and Society in the Near East, the Greco-Roman

World, and the Early Medieval West, Leuven 2003, pp. 163–174, especially pp.

170–171.

55 On the Syriac schools of exegesis, see Teixidor (above, note 44), pp. 25, 28–

29; and see Becker, Fear of God (above, note 4), p. 129.

(forthcoming)

the tendency to play down Christian or Byzantine influences.56

Cultural transmission,

however, even when bound to manuscripts and regulated by schools, moves in more

diffuse ways.57

For the extraordinary burst of energy that characterizes the translation

movement, more than one factor was required, and highlighting the Iranian role need

not obliterate the contribution of the Christians. After all, many Iranians were

Christians. What made the movement possible is precisely the accumulation of

several factors, and the fact that the interests and the often contradictory drives of the

major intellectual components of the society coincided.

56 For a penetrating criticism of overemphasis of the Sasanian element, and for a

discussion of Gutas’s influence, see Mavroudi, ‘An Umayyad Bath’ (above, note 20),

especially pp. 734–738.

57 This point is forcefully argued by Saliba in his critique of the ‘classical narrative.’

He emphasizes, for example, the creative process that accompanied the translation

process; see Islamic Science (above, note 2), p. 18.