Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance

683 Pages·2016·7.91 MB·English

by  Dag Nikolaus Hasse

i tatti studies in
italian re nais sance history
Sponsored by Villa I Tatti
Harvard University Center for Italian Re nais sance Studies
Florence, Italy

SUCCESS
AND
SUPPRESSION
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy
in the Re nais sance
DAG NIKOLAUS HASSE
Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts
London, Eng land
2016
Copyright © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-674-97158-5 (hardcover)
To Mechtild, Henriette, and Ferdinand

CONTENTS
List of Figures and Tables · ix
Preface · xi
Note on Terminology, Orthography, and Transliteration · xix
PART I
THE PRESENCE OF ARABIC TRADITIONS
1. Introduction: Editions and Curricula · 3
2. Bio- Bibliography: A Canon of Learned Men · 28
3. Philology: Translators’ Programs and Techniques · 69
PART II
GREEKS VERSUS ARABS
4. Materia medica: Humanists on Laxatives · 137
5. Philosophy: Averroes’s Partisans and Enemies · 179
6. Astrology: Ptolemy against the Arabs · 248
7. Conclusion · 293
Appendix: The Availability of Arabic Authors in
Latin Editions of the Re nais sance · 317
Abbreviations · 409
Notes · 411
Bibliography · 549
Acknowl edgments · 633
Index of Names · 635
General Index · 655

FIGURES AND TABLES
FIGURES
Figure 1. Avicenna, Qānūn, with interlinear Latin translation by Girolamo
Ramusio, f. 169v. · 102
Figure 2. Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Basel,
1542, repr. Stanford, 1999), 446, 447 · 160
Figure 3. Joachim Camerarius (the Younger), De plantis epitome utilissima Petri
Andreae Matthioli (Frankfurt am Main, 1586), 538, 539 · 168
Figure 4. Triumph of Thomas Aquinas: panel painting in the Dominican
cloister San Marco, Florence (mid- fi fteenth c entury) · 188
Figure 5. Triumph of Thomas Aquinas: Thomas Aquinas, In decem libros
Ethicorum Aristotelis profundissima commentaria (Venice, 1526 or 1531),
f. 1r · 189
Figure 6. Giambattista Riccioli, Almagestum novum astronomiam veterem no-
vamque complectens (Bologna, 1651), 7.5, 672 · 275
TABLES
Table 1. Printed Latin editions of Arabic authors before 1700 · 8
Table 2. Re nais sance Latin translations of Arabic sciences and philosophy
(1450–1700) · 72
Table 3. The monograph on Senna in Pseudo- Mesue’s De simplicibus · 125
Table 4. Astrological histories from Pierre d’Ailly to Giambattista
Riccioli · 280