Einteilen und Verstehen

Wider research context: From the ninth century CE onwards, the late Antique medical tradition and its main texts were transmitted into Arabic. Whereas we are well-informed on the translations of the original works by Galen, precise evidence of how Alexandrian Galenic exegesis reached the Arabic speaking world is harder to come by. The history of the ensuing engagement with Galen’s legacy in the Arabic-Islamic world is better documented but has been studied unevenly so far. The project “Divide and Understand. A Long Century of Galenic Exegesis in Arabic” focuses on the period from roughly 950 to 1075 CE in which alone divisions of and lemmatic commentaries on Galen’s original texts were composed.
Objectives: On a historical level, the project’s objective is to document and study the emergence, culmination and final disappearance of Arabic commentaries on Galenic works. On an epistemological level, we enquire in how far textual division and structuring influences the understanding of a given text.
Methods and Approach: We read, study and partly transcribe, edit and translate manuscripts containing the exegetical texts by Ibn Abî l-Ash'ath (d. around 975), Ibn al-Tayyib (d. 1043), Ibn Ridwân (d. 1061) and Ibn Abî Sâdiq (fl. 11th cen.), using palaeographical and philological methods. These texts are then compared with the Greek tradition as well as with each other, applying a comparative approach.
Originality: The project’s corpus consists of exegetical texts that are hitherto unedited and largely unstudied. We thus expect to gain new insight into these texts, the doctrines of their authors as well as the engagement with Galen and applied exegetical strategies.
Researchers involved: The project’s principal investigator Elvira Wakelnig is Associate Professor of Arabic Studies at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna and does research on the transmission of Greek medicine and philosophy into Arabic as well as on Arabic scientific texts and their contexts. The research assistant Helia Jasemzadeh is currently doing her PhD on the Arabic Galen reception.