THE TEXT OF ARISTOTLE'S DE ANIMA AND ITS TRANSLATOR

by Alfred L. Ivry

New York

For Franz Rosenthal on his eighty-fifth birthday

The evidence of extant manuscripts tells us that Aristotle's work On the Soul was translated at least twice into Arabic. This supplements the prob- lematic accounts of the bio-bibliographers, which accounts taken together would have (d. 910 a.d.) as having translated and much later revised both Aristotle's text and Themistius' paraphrase.' Thus Ibn al- Nadim, writing in 337/987 and the primary source, apparently has Ishaq saying that he worked initially with a deficient copy of De anima (in either a Greek or Syriac version, the latter seemingly translated by his father Hunayn); and that some thirty years later, upon the discovery of an excel- lent (presumably Greek) manuscript of Themistius' paraphrase of this work, he utilized it to produce a revised translation of the Aristotelian text. Roughly two hundred and fifty years later, Ibn al-Qifti repeated most of Ibn al-Nadim's remarks, though having Ishaq revise an earlier translation of both Aristotle and Themistius. Ibn al-Qifti's description of the second Themistean translation is obviously cribbed from Ibn al-Nadim's entry, repeating the same circumstances. , Ibn al-Nadim's contemporary, cryptically reports that Ishaq "translated the philosopher Aristotle's Book On the Soul in seven chapters which he found in Themistius' commentary;"2

Cf. the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim, ed. G. Fliigel (Leipzig, 1871), p. 251; Ibn al-Qifti's Ta'rikh al-hukama', ed. J. Lippert (Leipzig, 1903), p. 41; and Ibn Juljul's Tabaqdt al-'atihba wa l-hukama', ed. f. Sayyid (Cairo, 1955), p. 69. The remarks of these men and those of the seventeenth century bibliographer Hajji Khalifah are quoted and discussed by Helmut Gatje in his Studien zur Uberlieferung der Aristotelischen Psychologie im Islam (Heidelberg, 197 1),), pp. 20, 21. See too the summary and discussion found in F.E. Peters, AristotelesArabus (Leiden, 1968), pp. 40-45. 2 Wa-huwa tarjamat kitäh al-na[.s lil홢{ay/as홢{Aristälä/isfi sab' maqä/ät wajadahû bi-Iaj.홢ir Thdmistiyus. Cf. Ibn Juljul, op. cit., and Gatje, p. 21. Though Ibn Juljul's statement of the seven chapter Themistean paraphrase echoes Ibn al-Nadim's remark, it is tempting to believe he wrote, or meant to write, not that (or not only that) Ishaq found (wqiadah홢) Themistius' paraphrase, but that he emended (wa jawwadahu) Aristotle's text with it. by which he apparently meant that Ishaq composed his (revised?) transla- tion with the help of Themistius' seven chapter paraphrase. Ishaq is recognized by these scholars as the Arabic translator of both Aristotle's and Themistius' works on the soul, though whether one or both received a later recension by him is not clear. Ishaq, however, is not the sole translator of the Aristotelian text, and possibly did not achieve a complete translation even in his revised version. At least one other translation is extant; its author, however, anonymous. Though attributed to Ishaq,3 this second translation is clearly the work of another, and is identified as such -alia tran slatio- in excerpts found in the Latin version of ' Long Com- mentary on the De Anima (Latin being the only language in which this long commentary is preserved).4 That this "other" translation is not that of Ishaq has been ascertained on philological grounds, through identifying the Latin excerpts of the alia trans- latio with the Arabic edition of this translation (henceforth: Pseudo-Ishaq), and by comparing this translation with others known to be lshdq's.' Presumably the translation used by Averroes for the bulk of Aristotle's text, as retained in the Latin lemmata of the Long Commentary, was that of Ishaq, yet hitherto no positive confirmation of this has been made. Indeed, Ishaq's authorship of this translation has been denied;6 leaving us, in this view, only with fragments of Ishâq's version of this important text. The existence of such fragments has been detected in the glosses Avi- cenna wrote on the margins of his copy of Ish5q's translation of De anima Only 's glosses have been preserved, associated with his mostly lost Kitdb al-Insaf.8 They have been edited as part of the Aristotelian cor- pus in Arabic, called simply Avicenna's "marginal notes" to the De Ani- ma.99

3 Cf. Abd al-Rahman Badawi, Arislotelis de Anima (Cairo, 1954), p. 5. a Cf. F. S. Crawford, ed., Averrois Cordubensis Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De .4nima Libros (Cambridge, MA., 1953), pp. 46, 86, 218, 284, 452, 469, 480, 514, 519, 526. 5 Cf. R. Frank, "Some Fragments of Ishaq's Translation of the De Anima," Cahiers de Byrsa VIII (1958-59), 231-51. This article will be referred to as "Fragments" henceforth. 홢 Fragments, p. 234, note 2. See too Peters, op. cit., p. 42. 7 Fragments, pp. 233, 235-247. Identification of Ishaq's authorship of the translation is made again on philological grounds, comparing the style and vocabulary of these extracts with other texts known to be by lsh5q. 8 An association apparently not integral to the larger work. Cf. now D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition (Leiden, 1988), pp. 137 ff. 9 The full title in Arabic is Al-Ta`li9at 'alti hawashi Kitah al-Naf.홢 li- 'Arislâlâlis min kalâm as-shaykh ar-ra'is Abi 'Ali ibn Sind, ed. 'A. Badawi, Aristu `inda 1- 'arab (Cairo, 1947), pp. 75-1 16. Further identification of the translator is rendered by a marginal comment on p. 109 explicitly attributing the translation of the Aristotelian source up to that point (De An. 431aa 14) to Ishaq. Future references to these glosses will identify them as "Marginal Notes."