Abstract
Arabic logic started with the translations of the Aristotelian and Greek texts. These translations were first made in Syria from Greek to Syriac, then Arabic during the Umayyad Empire for some treatises, but the most important amount of translations was made during the Abbasid Empire [Baghdad, 750–1258 AD], starting from the reign of Abu Jaafar al-Manṣūr [754–775 AD], then Hārūn al Rashīd [786–809 AD] and al-Ma’mūn [813–833 AD] who founded an academy devoted to translation called “Beit al-Ḥikma” (literally: “the House of Wisdom”) [830 AD] (see [127], 140).
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Notes
- 1.
Note that historically, the very first Arabic logicians are al-Kindī and presumably Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, who wrote a treatise entitled “al-Mantiq”. Cristina D’Ancona says that we don’t know if it is Muhammed Ibn al-Muqaffa’ or rather his father Abdullah who translated “Porphyry’s Isagoge, the Categories, De Interpretatione and Prior Analytics” ([62], Sect. 2), while N. Rescher [126] reports that it is the son Muhammed ibn Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa‛ (d.c.800 A.D.) who is probably a translator or an author of a commentary in logic, and W. Hodges says that it must be Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa‛ (the father) and the famous translator of Kalilah wa Dimna who wrote the commentary in logic entitled “al-Mantiq” (personal communication). As to al-Kindī, N. Rescher [126, Chap. 2, 15–27] evokes a treatise of al-Kindī on Aristotle’s Organon entitled “On the objectives (or: subject-materials) of Aristotle in each of his treatises” (Kitāb fī aghrāḍ Aristūtālīs fī kull wāhid min kutubihi).
- 2.
More information about the authors of the post-classical periods, such as the post-Avicennans can be found in the studies of Tony Street and Khaled El-Rouayheb, for instance, among others.
- 3.
Charles Burnett evokes the treatise of al-Fārābī entitled “On the Syllogism” [presumably al-Qiyās], and also some parts of al-Shifā, by Ibn Sīnā, plus The aims of the Philosophers of al-Ghazālī.
- 4.
In the Western area, many people use the modern symbolisms to interpret the traditional texts as we will see in the whole book. In the Arabic area, see [75] for an application of modern methods to Arabic logic.
- 5.
See, for instance, Tony Street in his “An outline of Avicenna’s syllogistic” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 84 (2), ([136], 129–160), Paul Thom in his paper “Logic and metaphysics in Avicenna’s modal syllogistic” ([143], 283–295). Wilfrid Hodges too studied modal logic , in many of his papers and books, for instance, Wilfrid Hodges “Ibn Sīna on modes”, Ibāra ii.4, 2010 ([81]), “Ibn Sina’s alethic Modal Logic” ([93]), see also [83] and Mathematical Background to the Logic of Avicenna, 2014 ([92]). See also Henrik Lagerlund and Allan Bäck, who published papers on the modal syllogistic of Avicenna, e.g., Allan Bäck “Avicenna’s conception of the modalities”, Vivarium XXX, 2, 217–255, 1992 ([39]), and Henrik Lagerlund “Avicenna and Tūsi on modal logic”, in History and Philosophy of Logic, 30: 3, 227–239, 2009 ([105]) (see also [41] for islamic logic in general).
- 6.
The transmissions between Arabic logic and other traditions, in particular, Greek and Western Medieval, have been studied by Zimmermann (1972) ([150]), who focuses mainly on al-Fārābī and his Greek and Syriac predecessors. See also A. Hasnawi and W. Hodges (2016) ([79]) and J. Brumberg-Chaumont ([46]) who studies the transmissions of Ancient logic to both Arabic logic and Western Medieval logic.
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Chatti, S. (2019). General Introduction. In: Arabic Logic from al-Fārābī to Averroes . Studies in Universal Logic. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27466-5_1
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