The Aristotelian Tradition in Syriac

John W. Watt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367661229
• eBook ISBN: 9780429817489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This volume presents a panorama of Syriac engagement with Aristotelian philosophy primarily situated in the 6th to the 9th centuries, but also ranging to the 13th. It offers a wide range of articles, opening with surveys on the most important philosophical writers of the period before providing detailed studies of two Syriac prolegomena to Aristotle's Categories and examining the works of Hunayn, the most famous Arabic translator of the 9th century. Watt also examines the relationships between philosophy, rhetoric and political thought in the period, and explores the connection between earlier Syriac tradition and later Arabic philosophy in the thought of the 13th century Syriac polymath Bar Hebraeus.

Collected together for the first time, these articles present an engaging and thorough history of Aristotelian philosophy during this period in the Near East, in Syriac and Arabic.

1
From Alexandria to Baghdad

Max Meyerhof revisited¹

In June 1930 the medical historian and Arabic scholar Max Meyerhof presented a paper at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin under the title ‘From Alexandria to Baghdad: A Contribution to the History of Philosophical and Medical Instruction among the Arabs’.² For many years the content of that lecture had a profound impact on the study of Greek influence on philosophy and science in the Near East, and the title still serves as a catchword designating the remarkable efflorescence of these subjects in medieval Islamic culture. Basing his argument on a passage attributed to al-Fārābī in Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a,³ Meyerhof contended that the manifestation of a philosophical culture of Greek inspiration in the Baghdad of the early Abbasids is to be explained by the fact that the School of Alexandria survived the conquest of the city by the Arabs and in subsequent years was transferred first to Antioch, and then to Ḥarrān, from which eventually four Christian philosophers made their way to Baghdad.⁴

It has to be said straightaway that despite its earlier influence, Meyerhof’s explanation for the process of the intellectual transfer has little credibility today. Arabic scholarship in particular has undermined its foundations.⁵ One may therefore well ask what value may be derived from revisiting it now. The answer lies in Meyerhof’s insights into the conditions and circumstances which could have sustained this process, independently of his particular thesis of the transfer of the School of Alexandria. In focusing on this school, Meyerhof was, however, implicitly recognising the importance that educational institutions could have in sustaining philosophical and medical activity. Furthermore, he drew attention to the importance of Christians in late antique Greek culture, and in particular to that of Syriac Christians in the Near East as admirers of Greek thought in the years between the sixth and ninth centuries CE. Both these insights deserve to be developed. Meyerhof sought advice on the Syriac evidence from Anton Baumstark, but not even Baumstark, the grand master of Christian Oriental Studies, could grasp the whole picture, and since 1930 further evidence has become available. Philosophy and Christian theology had been brought together in Alexandria by Origen, and Meyerhof realised that the interweaving of the two might not have been without significance in the years between the last known professors of philosophy in Alexandria and the emergence of the discipline at Baghdad.

We may therefore begin with a summary of his account of the importance of Christians and Syrians. Recognising that this had not gone unnoticed even before his time, he pointed to the lively description of student life in Alexandria in the Life of Severus by Zacharias Scholasticus, from which we learn of the existence of a Christian group of philoponoi. He mentioned the important Christian figures of John Philoponus and Sergius of Reshaina (died 536), and noted that privileged sons of wealthy Near Eastern families made their way to Alexandria or, if particularly interested in the law, to Beirut. As the principal centres of Greek studies in the Syriac-speaking and Middle Persian regions in pre-Islamic times he singled out Edessa, Nisibis, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and Gundishapur for the Nestorians (East Syrians), and Antioch and Amida for the Jacobites (Syriac Orthodox). He also made reference to the monastic schools, and recognised that for Greek scholarship the most important of these was Qenneshre. Significantly, he noted that the learned men of the time were mostly churchmen, and from the eighth/ninth centuries drew attention to the Catholicus Timothy I. The transfer of the School of Alexandria to Antioch (which he assumed from al-Fārābī and al-Mas‘ūdī) following the fall of Alexandria to the Arabs he considered to be quite natural, believing that thereby it had been transferred into Syriac-speaking territory. ‘Translation into Syriac was undoubtedly carried out at the new School’, he asserted, ‘although we have no reports of this, or indeed of the existence of the School itself, from Syriac sources’. Similarly on the School in Ḥarrān he could produce no sources, apart from the accounts of al-Fārābī and al-Mas‘ūdī. With the mention of four names by al-Fārābī at the end of the Ḥarrān period, all of them Christians who subsequently taught in Baghdad, Meyerhof concluded that in Ḥarrān the school was directed by Christians, not Sabians. Al-Fārābī’s account dated the effective ‘appearance of philosophy in Islam’ with the arrival of these four figures in Baghdad.⁶

So much for Meyerhof. What in his account needs correction? Let us commence with Sergius. Sergius is arguably more important than even Meyerhof realised. He was not the first Syriac translator of a school treatise of Aristotle (although he did translate the pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo), but he was the first Syriac commentator, and his commentary on the Categories clearly belongs within the Alexandrian commentary tradition, with particularly close connections to those of Ammonius and Philoponus. He was the first Syriac translator of Galen, and to his work in philosophy and medicine we must also add theology, for he translated the Corpus Dionysiacum and composed a few small theological treatises. The writings of Pseudo-Dionysius are, to be sure, a very special form of Christian theology and intimately linked to the Neoplatonism of late antique Greek philosophy, which envisaged the Corpus Aristotelicum as preliminary to the greater mysteries to be found in Plato. For Sergius, Aristotelian and medical doctor, but also Christian, the study of Aristotle had greater independent worth in itself than that accorded it by his Alexandrian masters, but he appears to have shared with them the conviction that Aristotelian philosophy ultimately required to be completed by a guide to the supra-mundane mysteries. That guide was not, however, the Platonic theology of pagan Neoplatonism, but the biblical theology of Pseudo-Dionysius. The template established by Sergius, Aristotle, and Pseudo-Dionysius to the virtual exclusion of Plato set the pattern not only for subsequent Syriac Christianity, but to a considerable extent also, mutatis mutandis, for Islamic philosophy.⁷

It is noteworthy in this connection that, according to the prologue, Sergius’ commentary on the Categories (and many of his other works) was written for Theodore, bishop of Karkh Juddan (on the Tigris). To be sure, the prologue follows the literary convention according to which a work should be dedicated to an eminent personality, and the commentary was intended to be read by many others in addition to Theodore.⁸ But the ecclesiastical affiliation of the dedicatee is still of some significance, as we can see here the interest of Syriac clergy in Aristotelian philosophy. It was not necessary that the School of Alexandria be transferred to Antioch for Alexandrian Aristotelianism to penetrate the Syriac linguistic area. It was sufficient that Syrians such as Sergius studied in Alexandria, and others such as Theodore wished to hear about it.

Sergius’ intention was to offer an exposition of the entire Aristotelian school corpus from the Categories to the Metaphysics, including in the section on logic the complete sequence of the Organon from the Categories to the Sophistical Refutations and possibly also the Rhetoric. How much of that he actually completed is unknown, for only his commentary on the Categories has come down to us. The seemingly popular introduction to logic based on the ‘truncated Organon’ ending at Prior Analytics I.7 was of no particular interest to him; in accordance with the teaching of his Alexandrian masters he considered the Posterior Analytics to be the most important logical treatise of Aristotle. In the text of al-Fārābī on which Meyerhof based his reconstruction, the study under a teacher of the Organon beyond Prior Analytics I.7 is said to have been forbidden by Christian bishops until the coming of Islam on the grounds that it was dangerous to Christianity, and the effective curtailment of logical study to this restricted domain, if not the cause claimed by al-Fārābī, has often been thought to be operative throughout Syriac Christianity in the pre-Abbasid years.⁹ Sergius, however, and (as we shall see later) the most important Syriac Aristotelians of the following century were interested in the full Organon.¹⁰

Meyerhof acknowledged the presence of monastic schools in Syriac-speaking regions. On the instruction provided at them he wrote that it was ‘mostly theological’, but ‘at many of them secular studies were also permitted’. He also recognised the most important of them: Qenneshre, on the Euphrates.¹¹ But with the evidence then at his disposal, he could hardly have been expected to realise just how important it was. Over against Meyerhof stands Gotthard Strohmaier, who, though also believing in the transfer of the School of Alexandria to Antioch, does not attribute the significance of it accorded by Meyerhof. ‘Everywhere in Syriac Christianity’, he contends, ‘instruction was also provided in secular subjects’.¹² That may well be correct, but perhaps Meyerhof was still not wide of the mark in assuming that an ‘elite’ institution could have played a significant role in these years, providing a centre for these studies to which those who were greatly interested in them would be drawn. The fantasies of al-Fārābī concerning Antioch and Ḥarrān are not, however, the right places in which to look for such an institution. Meyerhof mentioned the best candidate, although he did not recognise it as such: the monastic school of Qenneshre.

Although a Syriac monastery, Qenneshre was celebrated as a centre for Greek studies. Moreover, it had originally been founded in Greek territory, as the monastery of St. Thomas at Seleucia near Antioch, and was transferred between 528 and 531 to Qenneshre under the leadership of John Bar Aphtonia as a consequence of the persecution of miaphysites by Justinian.¹³ We can reasonably assume that whatever Greek scholarship was cultivated in it before the migration did not suddenly end with its removal to Syriac-speaking territory, but continued uninterrupted in the following years and into the seventh century, when we hear of a number of scholars associated with it who possessed a fine knowledge of Greek. John himself, who had been educated at St. Thomas, probably wrote only in Greek. He came from a privileged, Hellenised family in Edessa. His father was a rhetorician, and John also might have been educated as an advocate (in Beirut?). The account of his life by a monk of Qenneshre is a fine example of classical epideictic rhetoric, although written in Syriac, not Greek.¹⁴ Qenneshre was therefore to some degree bilingual from...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 From Alexandria to Baghdad: Max Meyerhof revisited
• 2 From Sergius to Mattā: Aristotle and Pseudo-Dionysius in Syriac tradition
• 3 The Syriac Aristotle between Alexandria and Baghdad
• 4 Sergius of Reshaina on the prolegomena to Aristotle’s logic: the commentary on the Categories, chapter two
• 5 The prolegomena to the Aristotelian philosophy of George, bishop of the Arabs
• 6 Why did Ḥunayn, the master translator into Arabic, make translations into Syriac? On the purpose of the Syriac translations of Ḥunayn and his circle
• 7 The Syriac translations of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and their precursors
• 8 Greek thought and Syriac controversies
• 9 Julian’s Letter to Themistius – and Themistius’ response?
• 10 Themistius and Julian: their association in Syriac and Arabic tradition
• 11 Literary and philosophical rhetoric in Syriac
• 12 Greek philosophy and Syriac culture in Abbasid Iraq
• 13 Graeco-Syriac tradition and Arabic philosophy in Bar Hebraeus
• 14 Aristotle’s Rhetoric and political thought in the Christian Orient and in al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes
• Index