24 Introduction 



indeed the responsibility as well as the work was shared. As all of these 

 scholars were translating texts of the same nature at about the same 

 time in the same milieu and under the same guidance, all the translations 

 made by a single group or school, have naturally the same philological 

 and spiritual characteristics. 



In the case of philosophical writings a new kind of difficulty had to 

 be overcome because different traditions coalesced and contaminated 

 one another. Thus the Peripatetic tradition was spoiled by Neopla- 

 tonic contaminations of various sorts and later by theological interfer- 

 ence. The history of Muslim Aristotelism, and of mediaeval Aristotelism 

 in general, is to a large extent an account of the gradual recovery of the 

 Aristotelian texts in their integrity.^^ 



From the point of view of tradition it is very fortunate that almost all 

 of those mediaeval translators (whether Muslims, Jews or Cliristians) 

 had one quality in common; they were far more interested in the con- 

 tents than in the form; their superstitious reverence for the text to be 

 translated was such that their translations were literal and pedantic. 

 This is so true that one can easily spot Hellenisms in the Arabic trans- 

 lations and Arabicisms in the Latin ones; these literary faults are not 

 restricted to words, they extend to phrases and idioms.^^ Some trans- 

 lated phrases are so literal indeed that they cannot be correctly under- 

 stood without a mental retranslation into the original language, or to 

 look at it from another angle, that peculiarities of the original language 

 can be inferred without doubt.-^ 



In short, if accidents did not destroy the MSS. in the course of time, 

 the masterpieces of antiquity were remarkably well preserved because 

 of the slavish faithfulness of oral and written traditions. 



In spite of that we still have many doubts, especially concerning the 

 writings of many Greek men of science anterior to Plato. The only 

 fragment of Hellenic {i.e., pre- Alexandrian ) geometry which has come 



^ An initial difficulty was due to the fact that the works of Aristotle were not 

 finished literary productions like those of Plato but rather in the form of rough 

 lecture notes. 



^ The Arabic ( or Latin ) word might reproduce a metaphor of the Greek ( or 

 Arabic) or when no word existed in Arabic (or Latin) and none could be easily 

 built, the original term might be transliterated into the other language. E.g., the 

 word mater in the terms designating the membranes of the brain (dura mater, pia 

 mater) is a reproduction of the Arabic metaphor umm al-dimagh. The coccyx was 

 called in Arabic al-'us'us and this became in mediaeval Latin alhasos or alhosos (the 

 Arabic article was often incorporated as if it were an integral part of the word ) ; the 

 wisdom teeth al-najidh, pi., al-nawajidh were called in Latin nuaged, neguegid, etc. 

 In the Qanun Ibn Sina dealt with love as a mental disease; the Arabic for sexual 

 love, al-'ishq appeared in the Latin version as ilixi or alhasch. These examples 

 could be multiplied endlessly. 



^Thus Heiberg translated book 1 of the Ochumena into Greek (Doric) on 

 the basis of the Latin version of William of Moerbeke. Archimedis nepl 

 dxoviMevwv liber 1 graece restituit Johan Ludwig Heiberg ( Melanges Graux, 689-709, 

 Paris 1884) It is very interesting to compare his "reconstruction" with the original 

 Greek text which he found some twenty years later in Constantinople. Archimedis 

 opera (2, 317-45, 1913). 



