doc.pdf

More documents

Recommendations

Info

few excerpts in J.S. Assemani's Bibliotheca Orientalis and an article by Eugene Bo1-6 published in the Journal Asiatique in 1834. The work of editing and publishing the various parts of this work. which began towards the end of the 19th century, was at last completed in 1985. The work as a whole is also available now in a single volume published by Metropolitan Y.Y. Ci~ek in 1997, and there also exists an edition of a modem Arabic translation by Metropolitan D.B. Jijawi which appeared in print in 1996. With the whole work thus available in print time now seems ripe for a closer examination of the various parts of the text; for while the editors of the different parts of this work have usually given us some general indications of the sources used by Barhebraeus, little has been done so far in the way of identifying more precisely the sources of each particular passage. As a small contribution to this work of identifying the sources, I propose to examine here those passages in the Second Base of Cand. where Barhebraeus deals with subject matters which go back ultimately to Aristotle's Meteorologica. These passages are to be found in Sections (nishe) 2 and 4 (on the elements "earth" and "air") of Base 11, Chapter 3, Part 1, the part in which the author deals with things created by God on the First Day of re at ion.^ As is well known, Aristotle's Meteorologica covers not only meteorology proper, but also touches on such matters as mineralogy and mathematical geography. Within the two sections that I propose to discuss, the first half of Section 2 and the greater part of Section 4 deal, respectively, with mineralogy and meteorology and the same sources are used in these two parts. The sources used, on the other hand, in the latter half of Section 2, which deals with mathematical geography, are quite different from those used in the first half of the same section and in Section 4. : begin therefore with an enumeration of the sources used by Barhebraeus for his information on mineralogy and meteorology, and go on to an enumeration of the sources for geography. This will then be followed by a summary presentation of the sources which have been identified so far. There are several aims which one might hope to achieve through a study such as this. Such a study ought in the first place to contribute to a better understanding of the text of Barhebraeus' work. - Examples will be given below which illustrate how the comparison with the sources allows us occasionally to improve the text of the work under examination and more frequently to improve the translation. - In those cases where the immediate source used by Barhebrakus is in a language ~ther than Syriac (i.e. Arabic), the study may also be of value for Syriac exicography, since the comparison with the source will tell us which Syriac vord Barhebraeus considered to be equivalent to which word in the language of Ed. BakoS (1 930-33) 82- 104, 109- 130; ed. Ci~ek (1997). 65-80. 84-98. - Unless otherwise indicated, the page and lines references below are to BakoS's edition.
THE GRECO-SYRIAC AND ARABIC SOURCES OF BARHEBRAEUS' MINERALOGY 219 the source. Secondly, we might also hope to gain some information on the work used as the source. In some cases, the text of Barhebraeus' work may provide support for certain variant readings in the source text. In those cases where the work used as the source is only preserved in an imperfect manner, the study of the kind undertaken here may contribute to the reconstruction of the text of the source. More generally, an examination of the manner in which Barhebraeus handles his sources ought to tell us about the value of Barhebraeus' text for the reconstruction of works which were used by him but have since 'been lost, and the way in which we might go about reconstructing such lost texts on the basis of Barhebraeus' text. Thirdly, such a study ought tell us more generally about the method used by Barhebraeus for composing his works, about the kind of works he preferred as his sources and the way in which he then handles these sources. Concerning this third aim, one point needs to be made from the outset, namely that there are two quite distinct types of passages in Cand. It was already noted by Koffler in his study of Base X (de resurrectione) published in 1932 that the first half of that base (chap. 1 and part of chap. 2) was devoted to philosophical discussions with little in its contents which was specifically Christian, while the second half (part of chap. 2, and chap. 3) was dogmatic and full of quotations from the Scripture and the Fathers. "After a long search", as he tells us, Koffler succeeded in identifying as the principal source of the first half the Mu?uzssal ajk& al-mutaqaddimin wa-1-muta"akhkhirin of Fakhr al-Din al-~iizi.' Similarly, in his study of Base IV (de incarnatione), Khoury noted that that base could be divided into an "apologetic and rational" part and a "theological and dogmatic" part,6 and that in the apologetic part recourse is frequently made to works of Islamic philosophers, including, in particular, the ~u&ssal.~ The subject matter of Base II did not allow such a straightforward bipartite division as found in Bases I'V and X, but here too there is a clear difference between the "dogmatic" and "philosophical/scientific" passages. The passages studied below all belong to the latter category. 2. Sources of Mineralogy and Meteorology 2.1. Nicolaus Damascenus In his edition of the first two bases of Cand., BakoS was more thorough than 5 Koffler ( 1932) 202-207. 6 Khoury (1965) 8-10. The distinction is more clearly made in his unpublished dissertation (Khoury [I9501 1.27 et passim). 7 Khoury ( 1965) 9.41. l l I. 246-249; id. (1950) 1.34.
Page 1 and 2: lslamlc Studies 41 :2 (2002) pp. 21
Page 3: THE GRECO-SYRIAC AND ARABIC SOURCES
Page 7 and 8: THE GRECO-SYRIAC AND ARABIC SOURCES
Page 19 and 20: THE GRECQ-SYRIAC AND ARABIC SOURCES
Page 55:
THE GRECO-SYRIAC AND ARABIC SOURCES
show all

doc.pdf

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?