Aristotelian Rhetoric in Syriac: Barhebraeus, Butyrum Sapientiae: Book of Rhetoric.

AuthorTreiger, Alexander

Aristotelian Rhetoric in Syriac: Barhebraeus, Butyrum Sapientiae: Book of Rhetoric. By JOHN W. WATT, with Daniel Isaac, Julian Faultless, and Ayman Shihadeh. Aristoteles Semitico-Latinus. Leiden: BRILL, 2005. Pp. X + 484. $250.

Bar-Hebraeus' (d. 1286) philosophical magnum opus, Ktaba d-Hewat hekmta (Cream of Wisdom, Butyrum sapientiae), is the most extensive exposition of Aristotelian philosophy in Syriac. It is divided into four parts, corresponding to the standard divisions of philosophy (with mathematics excluded): 1) logic (malliluta, nine books), 2) natural sciences (kyandyata, eight books), 3) metaphysics (bdtar kyandyata, two books), and 4) practical philosophy (pilosopiya praqtiqayta, three books), twenty-two books in total. Out of these, only eight have been edited to date: the books of Poetics (I: 9, by D. S. Margoliouth, in 1887), Mineralogy and Meteorology (II: 4-5, H. Takahashi, 2002), On the Plants (II: 6, H. J. Drossaart-Lulofs and E. L. J. Poortman, 1989), Ethics, Economics, and Politics (IV: 1-3, N. P. Joosse, 2004), and now Rhetoric (I: 8).

John W. Watt's edition and translation of the Rhetoric is a welcome contribution to the steadily growing corpus of editions of Bar-Hebraeus' Cream of Wisdom. Watt's edition is based on five manuscripts of the Rhetoric, the oldest among which (Florence, Laurenz. Or. 69) was copied in 1340. (The only remaining, sixth, manuscript of the Rhetoric is a late copy of Florence, Laurenz. Or. 69, and therefore was not taken into account in the edition.)

The Cream of Wisdom is modeled on Ibn Sina's (d. 1037) vast philosophical encyclopedia, The Book of the Cure (Kitab al-Sifa'), and--for the part on practical philosophy, treated only very sketchily by Ibn Sina--on Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's (d. 1274) Persian Nasirean Ethics (Akhlaq-e Naseri).

The Rhetoric of the Cream of Wisdom, as shown convincingly by Watt (pp. 20-29), relies on two major sources: Ibn Sina's Rhetoric (Khitaba) of The Book of the Cure and the now lost Syriac version of Aristotle's Rhetoric. (The Greek original of Aristotle's Rhetoric was not available to Bar-Hebraeus, and it is doubtful that he knew Greek.) Bar-Hebraeus' Rhetoric is a running paraphrase of these two sources.

As the Syriac version of Aristotle's Rhetoric is no longer extant, Watt has recourse to an Arabic version, produced probably in the early 'Abbasid period, before the time of Hunayn b. Ishaq (d. 873). (This version was edited by M. C. Lyons, Aristotle's Ars...

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