8 LIST OF TITLES REFERRING TO WORKS ON PSYCHOLOGY

265 LIST OF TITLES REFERRING TO WORKS ON PSYCHOLOGY

1a On the Soul

This is the agreed title for the work for which we have the most evidence. Themistius indicates that it had at least two books, and as the discussion of the intellect given by him in 307A was in the second book it is unlikely that there was a third. The work is said to have been part of a larger work called Physics, which may explain why Diogenes Laertius does not mention an On the Souf.l 4

1b On the Soul (Arabic title)

Gutas (1985) 80-2. Gage (1971) 73-4.

The Fihrist (Index) of lbn-an-Nadim, completed in 988 AD, is the only Arabic source that contains an original list of the works of Theophrastus (no.3A); all other Arabic bibliographies are directly or indirectly derived from it. It is clear from the nature and length of the list that it was compiled by lbn-an-Nadim himself, and not copied from a translation of a Greek source. His purpose in compiling the Fihrist, as he states in his introduction, was to include the "books of all the nations, Arab and non-Arab alike, which exist in the language and script of the Arabs"; in other words, he intended his list of works by non-Arab authors to be not bibliographies of works composed by them but rather inventories of books about which he had information that they had been made available, in some form or other, in Arabic. His information was of different sorts: a bookseller and scribe by profession active in Baghdad, the cultural and scientific centre of his time, he doubtless handled many of them himself; for the rest, he relied on both oral and written sources, and the dependability of his information is accordingly as good as they are. For Greek philo­ sophical works translated into Arabic he could hardly have had a more authoritative and reliable source: he derived a significant amount of his information from the philosopher Ya}:lya ibn-'Adl

14 Steinmetz (1964) 12 suggests that the 8-book Physics of Theophrastus consisted of 1-3 On Motion; 4-5 On the Sou~ 6 On the Coming-to-be of the Elements; 7-8 Meteorology. It should be noted that for Aristotle Diogenes lists only an On the Soul in a single book (V 22). See now Sharples ( 1998) 2-4. COMMENTARY 265 9

(893-974), the head of the Aristotelian school in Baghdad after 942. lbn-an-Nadim, who knew YaJ:lya personally and with whom he shared the same profession, had access also to his bibliographical files. In the case of Theophrastus, Ya~a may have been especially know­ ledgeable, since he translated Theophrastus' Metaphysics, as Ibn-an­ Nadlm informs us, a work which luckily is extant in Arabic.15 Ibn-an­ Nadlm's report on Theophrastus cannot be dismissed lightly. In the case of Theophrastus' psychological works, he lists only two, a treatise On the Soul, in one book, and another, On Sensation and the Sensible, in four. For the former he gives neither the source of his information nor the name of the translator. This is the only concrete reference to an Arabic translation of Theophrastus' On the Soul that is known so far; the only other known reference in Arabic to such a treatise, that by Qus.ta ibn-Liiqa (see below, 266) does not necessarily point to an Arabic version ofTheophrastus' work: Qus~a himself was an accomplished translator from the Greek and could have been referring to a Greek text. Ibn-an-Nadlm's report thus points to a work which has not been recovered either as an integral text in an independent MS tradition or indirectly in quotations by later authors. This fact should not detract however from either the validity or the value of this report; as a test case we have Theophrastus' Metaphysics, which lbn-an-Nadlm says was translated into Arabic, but which also left no traces in subsequent Arabic philosophical writing. In this case Ibn-an-Nadlm's report was corroborated by the discovery of two MSS containing the Arabic translation.15 In the case of On the Soul also the presumption is, unless there was a confusion in ascription to Theophrastus in the Greek tradition (and, more specifically, in the Greek MS used by the translator), that somebody translated into Arabic a Greek work on the soul in one book under the name of Theophrastus. This piece of evidence, as certain as any that can be had from bibliographical sources in late antiquity, has to be weighed in with the rest of the reports about Theophrastus' psychology. See on la above for Themistius' evidence that Theophrastus' On the Soul consisted of (at least) two books: Ibn-an-Nadlm's source knew it as an independent treatise in one book. This represents a different

15 For a quick review of all the references to the relationship between the two fellow scribes see G. Endress, The Works ofYahya ibn 'AdZ, Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag 1977 1-9; for the philosophical culture in Baghdad and its sophistication during their time see Joel Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, 2nd. ed. Leiden: Brilll04ff. 16 See Endress above, 28.