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A unique Averroes MS in the British Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Steven Harvey
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Extract

The fifth and last entry in British Museum MS Add. Or. 9061 (ff. 145b–154a) is described in the catalogue of Arabic MSS in the British Museum as Averroes's ‘synopsis contentorum’ of the eight books of Aristotle's Physics. This text appears as an unlikely addition to the rest of the MS, which contains the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in Arabic translation. The text, written in Maghrebi hand, is neat and pointed, and is marred only by a few small blotches. It was edited and translated into English by M. Saghir Hasan al-Masumi in 1956 in the Dacca University Studies under the title, ‘Ibn Rushd's Synopsis of Aristotle's Physics’.

Type
Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , October 1982 , pp. 571 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1982

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References

1 See Cureton, W. and Rjeu, C. H., Catalogue Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium qui in i Museo Britannico Asservantur, Part II, London, 1846, pp. 13–14, n. 13Google Scholar

2 See, e.g., the references provided below in notes 8–11. Unfortunately, Averroes's Middle commentary on Aristotle's Physics is not extant in Arabic. It is extant in two Hebrew translations, one written by Zerahyah ben Isaac ben Shealtiel Gracian in 1284, in Rome, and one written by Kalonymus ben Kalonymus in 1316, in Aries. There is a Latin translation of Zerahyah's translation, and a Latin translation of the first three treatises of Kalonymus's translation. On the Hebrew and Latin translations of the Middle commentary, see my ‘Averroes on the principles of nature: The Middle commentary on Aristotle's Physics I-II ’(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1977), 139–42Google Scholar

3 Masumi,‘Ibn Rushd's synopsis of Aristotle's Physics’, Dacca University Studies, VIII, 1956, 66.

4 F. 154a, (in ibid., 98).

5 Thus, for example, there is no mention of Masumi' article in G. C. Anawati' lengthy bibliography of Averroes, Mu'allifāt Ibn Rushd (‘Bibliographie d' Averroes’) (Algiers, 1978).

6 Bouyges, Maurice,‘Notes sur les philosophes arabes connus des Latins au Moyen Age: Inventaire des textes arales dΆAverroès’, Mèlanges de l' Universitè Saint-Joseph, Beyrouth, VIII, 1922, p. 18, n. 21Google Scholar

7 Wolfson, Harry A., ‘Plan for the publication of a Corpus Commentarirum Averrois in Aristotelem’, Speculum, VI, 1931, 418Google Scholar

8 Brockelmann, Carl,Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (Supplementbände), I, Leiden, 1937Google Scholar, 836 (461), D. 1; Alonso, P.Manuel, Teologia de Averroes, Madrid-Granada, 1947, 82Google Scholar

9 Miguel, Cruz Hernández, Historia de la filosofia espanola: filosofi hispano-musulmana, Madrid, 1957,II, p.51, n. 28Google Scholar

10 Peters, F. E., Aristoteles Arabus, Leiden, 1968, 33Google Scholar; ‘Abdurrahman Badawi, Histoire de la philosophie en Islam, Paris, 1972, II, p. 747, n. 15Google Scholar

11 The most recent list of Averroes's commentaries appeared in the Bulletin de Philosophie Mèdièvale, XX, 1978. Unfortunately, it is also the least accurate and most confusing of these lists. Not surprisingly, it too records the existence of an Arabic Middle commentary on the Physics (ibid., p. 63; cf. p. 64).

12 On one occasion, however, Kalonymus apparently translated ‘umūr with devarim (p. 89, 1. 13). Zerahyah's translation was’ inyanim.

13 See, e.g., Davidson's, Herbert introduction to his Hebrew of Averroes's middle commentaries on the Isagoge and Categories, Cambridge, Mass., 1969, p. XII;Google ScholarRosenthal, E. I. J., Averroe' commentary on Plato's Republic, Cambridge, 1956, p. 317, n. 1Google Scholar; and Berman, L. V., ‘The revised Hebrew translation of Averroes's Middle commentary on the Nicomachean ethics’, in The seventy-fifth anniversary volume of the Jewish Quarterly Review, (Ed) A.A., Neuman and S., Zeitlin, Philadelphia, 1967, p. 114, n. 18.Google Scholar

14 See my ‘Averroes on the principles of nature’, 179–241.

15 There are a number of typographical errors in the edition, but most of these are rather evident. See, e.g., p. 87, 1. 7; p. 90, 11. 9, 11, 13, 19, 20; p. 91, 11. 1, 15; p. 92,11. 6, 15, 19, 22; p. 93, 1. 1; p. 94,11. 11, 13, 20; p. 95,1. 2; p. 96,11. 7, 19; and p. 97, 1. 6.