Short description:

The series is devoted to the study of scientific and philosophical texts from the Classical and the Islamic world handed down in Arabic. Through critical text editions and monographs, it provides access to ancient scientific inquiry as it developed in a continuous tradition from Antiquity to the modern period. All editions are accompanied by translations and philological and explanatory notes.

Long description:

This book contains a new edition and English translation of the oldest commentary on Aristotle written in Arabic and preserved to this day, together with an extensive commentary. It is a compendium on the treatise De generatione et corruptione, written by the Imamite theologian and heresiographer Hasan b. M?s? al-Nawbakht? (fl. ca. 900). To this day, apart from the title of more than forty works and numerous fragments-taken mainly from his magnum opus, the Book of the Doctrines and Religions (Kit?b al-?r?? wa-al-diy?n?t)-only a single treatise of his, the Book of Shî?î Sects (Kitâb firaq al-shî?a), was known to us. The text sheds new light in several ways: firstly, on the the Arabic philosophical tradition, since it was composed during the obscure period between al-Kind? and al-F?r?b? (roughly, the 2^nd half of the 9^th c.); secondly, on the Greek tradition, since the author makes extensive use of Alexander?s lost commentary on De generatione; thirdly, on the formative period of sh??ism, since it helps us to reconstruct how the author borrowed from the Aristotelian tradition the tools necessary to build up a new anthropology compatible with the doctrine of the Occultation which he inaugurated at the time.

"[...] [Ein] Werk von geradezu stupender Gelehrsamkeit und Kompetenz, sowohl in geistesgeschichtlicher als auch in philosophischer und editorischer Hinsicht [...]"
Matthias Perkams in: Gnomon 89 (2017) Nr. 6: 561