Roger Pearse

At least some readers of this list are aware that Greek literature was translated into Syriac in late antiquity. Sometimes the Syriac translation is all that survives. After the Moslem conquest, Syriac literature was translated into Arabic, which is how Greek science got to the Arabs.

Most people are much less aware of Christian and patristic literature in Arabic translation. A 13th century Arabic Christian writer, Abu'l Barakat, included in one of his books a list of texts that existed. This gives us an idea of what they were using, and, potentially, an idea of materials still unexploited by scholarship.

I have just had this translated into English, and placed the result in the public domain. You can find it here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ab..._catalogue.htm

or here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ab...%20(trans).pdf

Some of the character set is easier to read in the PDF form!

I hope this will be of use to people who would like some idea of what was known in those parts at that date. I suspect that much of the literature in that language remains to be exploited.

The complete collection is here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/

I hope I may be forgiven a plug, since I had to pay money to get the translation made? If anyone would like to help support the site and buy a CDROM of the Fathers collection, you can do so from here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/al...hers_on_cd.htm

All the best,

Roger Pearse

avi

Thanks, Roger, always appreciate your input to the forum, and especially this welcome news of a new translation of the Arabic version of the Syriac translation of the Greek original.

The Greek influence on Arabic, Persian, and Turkic speaking peoples of the last centuries of the first millenium is a fascinating topic. Avi Cenna was not the only physician to regard himself as a "student" of Aristotle, Hippocrates, and other Greek physicians of note. One difference, with subsequent generations, however: Those guys living in CE 900, 1000, 1100, knew Greek. They did not depend upon translations!!! Aristotle's influence was not simply confined to medicine: Those guys also were "renaissance men", from our perspective, studying physics, astronomy, and mathematics as well as Greek literature and drama.


avi

Roger Pearse

In this case the text is an Arabic original. But it lists a considerable number of works which were indeed Arabic versions of Syriac versions of Greek texts.

Certainly people like Hunain ibn Ishaq knew Greek and Syriac; they had to, in order to do the work of translation. But the wholesale translation from Syriac into Arabic marks the decline of the former language and the triumph of Arabic, I think. The former Greek cities of the east still possessed considerable stores of Greek manuscripts, as Hunain records, although often in poor condition.

Indeed so, and the whole period is far too little known.