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ARABIC STÜDIES IN THE WARaURG INSTITUTE
J.B.Trapp
126
his demonstration as a whole was brilliant, especially in his
identification of the figures of the decans. Wilhelm Gundel's
Dekane und Dekanstornbilder, published in the Studien der
Bibliothek Warburg (1936) , was a more detailed investigation
of this tradition. More recently, David Pingree's The Thousands
of AbÜ Ma,shar, also published by the Warburg Institute (1968),
and his article on 'The Indian Iconography of the Decans and
Horas' in the Institute's Journal (1963) carried on this
interest. Warburg also made other important studies of the role
of Arab astronomy, astro1ogy and star-images in Europe.
Warburg bimself could not read Arabic, but Fritz Saxl, his
intellectual heir, could. Saxl carried on Warburg's studies of
Arabic star-imagery and its part in medieva1 c!vilization. He
pub1ished a paper on the Zodiac at Qu~ayr 'Amra, and his
surveys of astrological and mythological illuminated manuscripts
made use of much Arabic material. Another study arising out of
this interest was R.Hartmann's account of M~ammad's heavenly
journey and its meaning for Islam in the Vortrßge der Bibliothek
Warburg, 1928-9.
An important initiative, undertaken under the general
editorship of Raymond Klibansky and published by the Warburg
Institute,is the Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi-- the Latin and
Arabic translations of the Dialogues of Plato by which those
dialogues reached a later age. The following volumes of the
Arabic series have been published:
Vol. I. Galenus -- Compendium Timaei Platonis, edited by
Paul Kraus and Richard Walzer (1951)
Vol. II. Alfarabius -- De Platonis Philosophia, edited by
Franz Rosenthai and Richard Walzer (1943)
Vol.III: Alfarabius -- Compendium Legum Platonis, edited by
Francesco Gabrieli (1952).
The first Arabist to become a member of the Institute's
permanent staff (1965-72) was, however, A.I.Sabra, now of
Harvard. Sabra had previously held the Institute's Senior
Research Fellowship, to work on Arabic optics and geometry.
He has published in the Institute' s Journal: ''A twelfth-
century defence of the fourth figure of the syllogism' (1965);
'Simplicius's proof of Euclid's parallels postulate' (19€8);
'Thäbit Ibn Qurra on Euclid's parellels postulate' (1969).
Furthermore, for some years, in collaboration with Richard
Walzer of Oxford, Sabra conducted a seminar on Islamic
philosophy and religion at the Institute. Be also directed a
nurober of doctoral theses:
Kamal Hamid Shaddad: 'Ibn Taymiyya's critique of
~xistotelian logic'
Nabil Y.Shehaby: 'The propositional logic of Avicenna' (Saxl
Fund Research Fellow at the Institute, 1965-68)
127
Abdalla Bassan Zaroug: 'The concept of possibility in some
Arabic commentaries on Aristotle's De interpretatione'.
Professor Sabra's English translation, with commentary, of
the Optics of Ibn al-Haytham will be published by the Institute.
From 1971 to 1974 Dr Friedrich W.Zimmermann, now Lecturer in
Islamic Philosophy at Oxford, was Senior Research Fellow of the
Institute. His recent Muhammad ibn Muhammaa al-Firibi
[Commentarium in Aristoteiem] (1981) is the fruit of work done
during the tenure of the Fellowship. Later, Patricia Crone,
now Lecturer in Islamic History at Oxford, held the same
appointment. Her recent book Hagarism: The Making of the
Islamic World (with Michael Cook, 1980) was partly the result
of this.
The present Senior Research Fellow, Dr c.s.F.Burnett, works
chiefly on the eleventh- and twelfth-century translators from
and into Latin, Hebrew and Arabic active in Northern Spain. He
has in the press an edition,with translation,of Hermann of
Carinthia's De essentiis; he has published notes on AbÜ Matshar
and Picatrix in the Journal, and he is now working, with
Professor Pingree, on Arabic and Latin astrological texts.
Together they are editing the excerpts, in Arabic, of a lost
Persian astrological work attributed to Andarzaghar, and the
Latin Liber Aristotelis de 255 Indorum voluminibus summam
continens, a translation by Hugo of Santalla of an Arabic work
incorporating much of 'Andarzaghar'. He is also preparing for
publication by the Institute a survey of the medieval Latin
translations of al-Kindi (on the lines of M.-Th. d'Alverny's
Avicenna Latinus).
Most recently, Robert Jones has completed an M.Phil
dissertation on 'The Arabic and Persian studies of Giovan Battista
Raimondi (c. 1536-1614).
A colloquium held at the Institute in 1980 on the pseudo-
Aristotelian Secret of Secrets drew contributions on the Arabic
Kitäb as-Sirr from ~~oud Manzalaoui and Mario Grignaschi as
well as on the Latin, English, French, Russian and Hebrew
versions. This, too, will be published by the Institute.
The foregoing studies have been supported, as they still are,
by the holdings of a Library and Photographie Collection which
is strengest on the oriental side in the history of Islamic
philosophy and science, particularly medicine and astrology-
astronomy, as well as in Islamic art. Special emphasis is placed
on interchange between civilizations -- ancient, modern, Eastern
and Western. Two books to have been written largely on the
Institute'sresources in art-history are Hugo Buchthal's and the
late Otto Kurz's Hand List of Illurninated Oriental Christian
Manuscripts (1942) and Professor Kurz's European Clocks and
Watches in the Near East (1975) . There is also good documentation
of the European image of and contact with the Turks, especially
during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, many of the books coming
128
from the library of the late Paul Wittek. The Library also
possesses a large number of books relating to Arabic studies,
especially those published in Germany, which arenot easily
available elsewhere in this country.
October, 1981.
129