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Ibn al-Samḥ*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

S. M. Stern
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Extract

Yaḥyā b. 'adī played an important role in the history of Aristotelian studies in Islam. By his extensive activity as translator, as textual critic, and as interpreter, he gave a new impetus to the study of Aristotle. He can clearly be recognized as the head of a distinct school of philosophers, and his influence remained discernible for several generations, especially in the school's tradition of Aristotelian interpretation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 88 , Issue 1-2 , April 1956 , pp. 31 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1956

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References

page 31 note 1 For Abu'l-Khayr b. al-Khammār, cf. Walzer, R., in Oriens, 1953, 91 ff., passimGoogle Scholar.

page 31 note 2 Margoliouth, D. S., On the Arabic version of Aristotle's Rhetoric, Semitic Studies in memory of Alexander Kohut, Berlin, 1897, 376Google Scholar: “Ibn Samḥ is certainly the celebrated logician of Baghdad, to whom the poet Abu'l-‘Alā’ al-Ma'arrī alludes in a verse of his Luzūmiyyāt (Eg. ed. p. 235), and whose floruit may be put about a.h. 300 or a.d. 900.” Schacht, J. and Meyerhof, M., The Medico-Philosophical Controversy between Ibn Buṭlān of Baghdad and Ibn Riḍwān of Cairo, 63Google Scholar: “Abū 'Alī ibn al-Samaḥ,” and note 19: “This is probably Abu'l-Qāsim Asbagh b. Muḥammad b. al-Samaḥ, famous Hispano-Arabic mathematician and astronomer; d. in his birthplace, Granada, in 426/1035 (IAU., ii, 39 foll.; Brockelmann, i, 472; Suter, 85; Sarton, i, 715).” Kh. Georr postulated for Ibn al-Samḥ a date anterior to 209/824 (cf. below, section (ii)). It was only in the catalogue of de Jong and de Goeje that he has been correctly dated, at least implicitly: as the teacher of al-Baṣrī who died in 436/1044 (cf. below, p. 38, note 1).

page 32 note 1 Corrected according to the excellent Leiden manuscript, no. 1443; the text of the very bad edition reads: “'Isā b. Thaqīf al-Rūmi Abu'l-Samḥ and other shaykhs of the Christians.”

page 32 note 2 Read with the Leiden manuscript: fī dukkān b. al-Samḥ (ed.: wa-kān b. al-Samḥ). According to this passage, Ibn al-Samḥ probably earned his livelihood as a bookseller.

page 32 note 3 Cf. Le Strange, G., Baghdad in the days of the Caliphate, 178, 218Google Scholar.

page 32 note 4 I shall show on another occasion that this, as well as other scholia in the printed edition, go back to Abu'l-‘Alā’.

page 33 note 1 See now, for some more details, the Appendice in Pines, S., La “Philosophie orientate” d'Avicenne et sa polémique contre les Bagdadiens, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age, 1953, 35 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 33 note 2 See now the article of Pines quoted in the preceding note. (The present article was finished before the appearance of Pines' study.)

page 33 note 3 Ibn al-Samḥ is mentioned by Ibn Buṭlān among the representatives of the sciences of the ancients who—as well as other learned men—died within the space of some ten years (quoted by Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a, i, 242, translated by Sehacht and Meyerhof in the passage quoted in p. 31, note 2). A compendious commentary of Ibn al-Samḥ on the Physics of Aristotle is mentioned by Ḥājjī Khalīfa, s.v. Sam' al-Kiyān (wa-li'bn al-Samḥ, 'alā hādha'l-kitāb sharḥ, ka'l-jawāmi'); it is possible that the reference is to the commentary which forms the subject of the next section of the present article. (This is also assumed by de Jong and de Goeje in their description of the Leiden manuscript.)

page 34 note 1 There are no points, but there can, of course, be no doubt about the reading.

page 34 note 2 Cf. Broekelmann, i, 321, where only Ibn Khallikān and al-Maqqarī are quoted.

page 34 note 3 Correct “'Abd Allāh” in the edition of Ibn al-Qifṭī.

page 34 note 4 Correct “al-Mursī” in the edition of Ibn al-Qifṭī.

page 34 note 5 So Ibn Khallikān, who gives the etymology of the name: Persian āluh “eagle”; the spelling in the edition of Ibn al-Qifṭī is to be corrected accordingly ( instead of ).

page 36 note 1 Al-Qaṣr “Castle”, is another name for Dizfūl (in Persian = “The Castle Bridge”), in full: Qaṣr al-Rūnash “Castle of al-Rūnash”, see Enc. of Islam, s.v. Dizfūl, and Le Strange, G., The Eastern Lands of the Caliphate, 238Google Scholar.

page 36 note 2 Jundaysābūr was famous for its medical school during the Sasanid and early Islamic periods; see Enc. of Islam, s.v. Djundīsābūr, , and Le Strange, , 238Google Scholar.

page 36 note 3 Important town, see Enc. of Islam, s.v., and Le Strange, , 237Google Scholar.

page 36 note 4 Most of the biographical works seem to write Abu'l-Ḥusayn, while the manuscripts of the al-Mu'tamad write Abu'l-Ḥasan. As we shall see, Abu'l-Ḥakam also wrote Abu'l-Ḥasan. It is difficult—and not very important—to decide which is the correct form.

page 36 note 5 He gives 463 as the year of al-Baṣrī's death, which is a manifest error.

page 36 note 6 I hope to give more details about this important work, the main source of Ibn al-Murtaḍā for his treatment of dogmatics, on another occasion.

page 37 note 1 Brockelmann registers in another chapter al-Baṣrī as the author of the commentary on the Physics (i, 600, Supplement, i, 829, quoting the Leiden Catalogue, Ibn Khallikān, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, and Ibn al-Qifṭī), without noticing the identity.

page 37 note 2 The first and the third of these passages are quoted in Goldziher, I., Stellung der alien Islamischen Orthodoxie zu den antiken Wissenschaften, Abh. d. kön. Preuss, Akad. d. Wiss., 1916, 12Google Scholar. Goldziher did not seem to realize that both referred to the same person.

page 38 note 1 The identification was already made by de Jong and de Goeje in the Catalogue. They write: “(The books of the Physics) illustrati explicationibus et observationibus plurium virorum doctorum, quas collegit et redegit Abu-l-Ḥusayn M.b. 'All al-Baṣrī († 436, v. Ibn Khali., de Slane, p. 675) auspice magistro suo Abu 'Alī ibn al-Samḥ.”

page 41 note 1 quote some of the relevant sentences. “The name of the translator is not given; but a number of subscriptions tell us something of the history of the book. It was written in the year of Alex. 1339, agreeing with a.d. 1016 [?!; the year of Alexander 1339 corresponds to a.h. 418, a.d. 1027!], and collated in the year of the Hijra 418 (a.d. 1027) . . . On fol. 18b . . . a marginal note by Ibn Samḥ himself is quoted . . . A further subscription states that the Paris MS. has been collated with one in the hand of Abu'l-'Abbās. It will be seen that the Arabic MS. is of the early eleventh century . . . the MSS. of which it was a copy were doubtless much earlier.” Follows the surmise about Ibn al-Samḥ's date (“about 300/900”) quoted above, p. 31, note 2.

page 41 note 2 Georr thinks that the manuscript is in the hand of Ibn al-Samḥ and reading the date in the note about the collation as 209/824 thinks that the manuscript, and Ibn al-Samḥ, must be earlier than that date. He then refers the date 320/932 in the note about Abu'l-'Abbās to a second collation, and concludes: “La date de 1027, doit être considérée done comme étant celle d'une troisième collation, et non celle de notre copie, comme l'ont supposé tous ceux qui ont examiné le manuscrit. (Tkatsch, [Die arabische Uebersetzung der Poetik des Aristotdes], i, 141Google Scholar, donne [evidently following Margoliouth]: 1016 pour la copie et 1027 pour la collation.) Le texte de la Rhétorigue doit done remonter au début du IX s., ce qui infirme la déclaration de Margoliouth, [Analecta Orientalia, 14]Google Scholar: “Tamen nullum fasciculum saec. XI initio reeentiorem esse manus et charta arguunt.” N.B.—In the sentence (p. 189, lines 3–4) “en l'année 1309 d'Alexandra (1027)”, 1309 is merely a printer's error for 1339.

page 42 note 1 For the Arabic text of the notes see on the whole Georr. I have examined the manuscript in Paris some years ago and some of the following remarks are based on notes taken at that time. I have before me a photograph of the colophon, but owing to its condition the photograph is very indistinct and practically useless. For this reason I have not added a reproduction of the photograph to the present article.

page 42 note 2 Hādhihi'l-nuslcha min khaṭṭ Ibn al-Samḥ fī ākhir al-juz' bi-kahaṭṭih ayḍā. This is wrongly translated by Georr as: “Cette copie est de la main de Ibn as-Samḥ; la fin de l'Opuscule est également de sa main.”

page 42 note 3 On the margin here: “Reached checking”. These words were in the previous descriptions mistakenly joined with the following line, and the date mentioned in this line was therefore taken as referring to a collation. In reality the line continues the previous line and the date refers to the copying.

page 43 note 1 Dr. G. Vajda, Paris, kindly re-examined the colophon at my request. He writes: “Avant je crois lire ” (if so, Ẓafar cannot be the name of the scribe).

page 43 note 2 Balaghat al-muqābala min al-nuskha allatī bi-khaṭṭ Abī 'Ali b. al-Samḥ, wrongly translated by Georr as: Fin de la collation de cette copie exécutée par Abū 'Alī ibn aa-Samḥ.

page 43 note 3 Dr. G. Vajda writes: “Vous hésitez pour la lecture de la date à la fin de la marque de collation sur la marge gauche. Je ne puis resoudre le problème, car j'y vois: . . . (ou ) ” So the riddle remains.

page 43 note 4 Georr, p. 189: “Ce texte ce trouvait en 509/1115 au Caire, dans la bibliotheque d'un certain 'Abdallāh ibn-'Isā [sic] ”. The note is longer and consists of four lines. As far as I can see on the photograph, line 1 () is correctly given by Georr. Lines 2–3 I cannot make out on the photograph at all. Line 4 I read: (?)