Although the existence of an Arabic translation of a section of Proclus' commentary on Plato's Timaeus lost in the Greek has been known since long, this text has not yet enjoyed a modern edition. The present article aims to consummate this desideratum by offering a critical edition of the Arabic fragment accompanied by an annotated English translation. The attached study of the contents and structure of the extant fragment shows that it displays all typical formal elements of Proclus' commentaries, whereas its conciseness and shortcomings raise certain doubts about its completeness. As a parergon, the article includes an analysis of a hitherto neglected letter by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, which is attached to the fragment in the manuscript transmission. In addition to providing some insight into the origins of the Proclian fragment, this letter sheds some light on the Syriac and Arabic reception of some works by Hippocrates and Galen, especially Hippocrates' On Regimen in Acute Diseases and the history of its Arabic translation.

Ptolemy presents only one argument for the eccentricity in his models of the superior planets, while each one of them has two eccentricities: one for center of the uniform motion, the other for the center of the constant distance. To take into account the first eccentricity, he introduces the equant point, but he provides no argument for the eccentricity of the center of the deferent. Why is the second eccentricity different from the first one? The 13th century astronomer Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, a member of the famous school of Marāgha, who was interested in this problem, suggests the “retrograde arcs” as the empirical origin of the second eccentricity and develops an argument to justify this conjecture. Although his argument is not without difficulty, his suggestion is in line with the suggestions made by some historians of astronomy in recent decades.

Al-Fārābī's lost commentary on Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea is without doubt one of the most sorely missed lost works of the Islamic falāsifa. In part, this is because the commentary was in some respects a scandal, and scholars accordingly believe it may hold the key to resolving present-day disagreements on how to interpret al-Fārābī's views as expressed in his independent treatises. Perhaps al-Fārābī's most shocking or scandalous statement is that preserved by the Hispano-Muslim philosophers Ibn Bājja, Ibn Ṭufayl, and Ibn Rushd. According to them al-Fārābī says in his commentary on Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea that happiness is to be achieved only in this life, not in the afterlife; that there is no happiness but political happiness; and that union with the active intellect – generally considered the highest goal of human existence by the philosophers – is impossible. This paper addresses the following questions: What exactly is the debate about? Why is the question of immortality or conjunction related to Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea? And why was it so controversial to say, in the context of the Ethica Nicomachea, that there is no happiness but political happiness? Although the bulk of al-Fārābī's commentary is still lost, I have discovered two quotations of it in Hebrew manuscripts. As I will argue in this paper, these newly-discovered quotations – which are included with an English translation in the appendix – can shed light on the mysteries concerning al-Fārābī's commentary.

Since Ibn Mattawayh and Mānkdīm up until George Hourani and Marie Bernand, there is an unstoppable interest among scholars towards ʿAbd al-Jabbār theory of knowledge. This interest has increased after the publication of the works of the late Muʿtazilites such as Kitāb al-Muʿtamad fī Uṣūl al-Dīn of Ibn al-Malāḥimī and Kitāb Taṣaffuḥ al-Adilla of his teacher Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī. This article seeks to examine ʿAbd al-Jabbār's theory of immediate knowledge based on his Mughnī and other sources from his students and the late Muʿtazilites. I will also examine the implication of ʿAbd al-Jabbār's view on immediate knowledge on his theological arguments. This article is divided into two divisions; firstly, I will study the definition of immediate knowledge according to ʿAbd al-Jabbār and the responses from his successors. Secondly, I will analyze his view on the types of immediate knowledge that closely related to his theological arguments. From this point of view I will indicate that the disagreement about the content of immediate knowledge will lead to the dispute on the theological arguments among Muslim theologians (mutakallimūn).

The bulk of Orientalist research regarding Islamic theological literature has neglected Ibāḍī theological opinions related to cosmology, which has led to an incomplete understanding of Islamic theology in the West and to a significant gap in Western scholarship. The omission of this important movement of Islam is understandable, considering the unavailability, lack of publication, circulation and translation of Ibāḍī texts. Therefore, this study seeks to address some of these gaps in the scholarship on early Islamic theology. The goals of this article are: 1) to characterize the classical Ibāḍī theological literature dealing with the atomistic theory of substance and accident; 2) to review the texts of Ibāḍī scholars as they argued and engaged with other Islamic theological schools: pre-Bahshamiyya Muʿtazilites (Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī, d. 321/933) and Ashʿarites (Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, d. 324/936), in relation to the atomistic theory of substance and accident during the 3rd/9th century; 3) to survey the wide range of opinions among the early Ibāḍī theologians, and to examine the specific sources and themes that may have influenced this multifarious school of thought. Likewise, it is the aim of this article to demonstrate the common features in the Ibāḍī approach to producing theological literature during the formation of Islamic theology, and to explore how these early theologians may have gained access to cosmological themes that predate Islam.

The concept of tawḥīd (unity of God) is a central issue in Kalām theological treatises. The discussion devoted to this concept follows a typical structure, a fact that has been recognized by scholars in the past. Shlomo Pines points to the similarity between the Kalām model of discussion and the structure of John Damascene's (d. 750) De Fide Orthodoxa. Pines suggested that it may indicate the profound impact of Christian theology on Muʿtazilite Kalām. Ulrich Rudolph adds two important pieces of evidence to the discussion: He analyzes Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī al-Samarqandī's (d. 944) Kitāb al-Tawḥīd and the Jacobite Moses bar-Kepha's (d. 903) introduction to his Hexaemeron, and argues that the structural and conceptual affinity between them actually indicates an opposite direction of influence than the one suggested by Pines. According to Rudolph, the similarity of the two treatises shows they were written as an imitation of an older Muʿtazilite book, which constituted a prototype for the discussion on the concept of tawḥīd. This paper will challenge Rudolph's thesis in two ways, first by questioning his arguments concerning the sources of the Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, and second by suggesting an alternative assumption, which will strengthen Pines's theory regarding the development of the Kalām model of discussion. Through a comparative structural analysis of the works of Māturīdī and bar-Kepha, together with some fragments of earlier Jewish and Christian commentaries on Genesis, will rise the possibility that this model of discussion existed first in the Christian exegetical treatises assigned to Genesis and had already developed before it appeared in the Kalām works.

La linguistique arabe est sans aucun doute la première science conçue et cultivée en arabe pour répondre à certains besoins scientifiques et idéologiques de la nouvelle société islamique. Les premiers travaux en ce domaine datent du VIIIe siècle, et leurs auteurs, les premiers linguistes, sont précisément contemporains de l'arabisation des institutions, de l'administration, de la monnaie etc., sous le Khalife Omeyade ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. Ces premiers travaux étaient intimement liés à l'exégèse coranique, à l'orthoépie coranique, à la jurisprudence islamique, c'est-à-dire aux disciplines associées à l'organisation de la nouvelle société et à sa culture. C'est à cette époque qu'Abū al-Aswad al-Duʾalī (mort en 688–9) inventa des signes graphiques permettant de distinguer les différentes fonctions grammaticales des éléments linguistiques. C'est à la même époque que l'on a engagé la codification massive et systématique des données de l'arabe, comme en témoignent, à peine plus tard, les travaux d'ʿAbdallāh ibn Isḥāq (m. 735), d'Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (m. 770) et de bien d'autres. Ils ont également initié l'étude de la grammaire au sens large, puisque celle du système phonétique y est incluse. Tous ces travaux ont tracé la voie de plusieurs disciplines: phonologie, phonétique, métrique, lexicographie, et favorisé la naissance des grandes théories du langage. Et, de fait, au cours de la seconde moitié du VIIIe siècle, al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad (m. 786–7) a fondé plusieurs de ces disciplines. Sa connaissance des mathématiques et son recours aux procédés combinatoires l'ont aidé non seulement à inventer des disciplines telles que la métrique et la lexicographie, mais aussi à formuler les catégories grammaticales. Son élève, l'éminent linguiste Sībawayh, a ensuite codifié la plupart des analyses et des explications d'al-Khalīl, et les a enrichies en maintes occasions. Cette période héroïque de la linguistique arabe s'est prolongée grâce à de grands successeurs qui vont fonder des écoles linguistiques à Bassorah, Kufa, Bagdad, etc. D'autres écoles ont également vu le jour à Fuṣṭāṭ et ailleurs, et la recherche linguistique va ainsi se poursuivre jusqu'à la fin du XIe siècle, au moins.