The Mathematical Sciences in Syriac: From Sergius of Resh-‘Aina and Severus Sebokht to Barhebraeus and Patriarch Ni‘matallah

Summary

Syriac translations and Syriac scholars played an important role in the transmission of the sciences, including the mathematical sciences, from the Greek to the Arabic world. Relatively little, unfortunately, remains of the translations and original mathematical works of earlier Syriac scholars, but some materials have survived, and further glimpses of what once existed may be gained from works of later authors. The paper will provide an overview of the earlier materials that have survived or are known to have existed. This will be followed by an account of some of the later materials, which will include an example illustrating how further earlier materials can be recovered from the writings of later authors, and a mention, by way of an epilogue, of an instance where a Syriac scholar was involved in a major historical and scientific event in the West, namely the reform of the calendar by Gregory XIII.

Notes

¹Among recent scholars looking mainly at the philosophical materials, Gutas, for example, gives the Syriacs a minimal role as initiators and promoters of the translation movement under the Abbasids, while acknowledging their role in providing the technical skills necessary for it (Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London, 1998), 20–22; cf. id., ‘Origins in Baghdad’, in Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 2010), 11–25), whereas Watt, as a Syriacist, would give the Syriacs a more active role in initiating and determining the course of that translation movement (John Watt, ‘Syriac Translators and Greek Philosophy in Early Abbasid Iraq’, Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies, 4 (2004), 15–26; id., ‘The Strategy of the Baghdad Philosophers: the Aristotelian Tradition as a Common Motif in Christian and Islamic Thought’, in Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam, edited by J. J. van Ginkel, H. L. Murre-van den Berg and T. M. van Lint (Louvain, 2005), 151–65). Saliba, as a science historian, takes a somewhat different approach and sees in the competition among the bureaucrats, many of them Syriacs, the initial driving force behind the development of the Arabic sciences (George Saliba, ‘Revisiting the Syriac Role in the Transmission of Greek Sciences into Arabic’, Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies, 4 (2004), 27–31; cf. id., Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 58–64).

²On this point, which has, of course, long been known but has been brought more clearly into light by recent studies, see, for example, Henri Hugonnard-Roche, La logique d'Aristote du grec au syriaque. Études sur la transmission des textes de l’Organon et leur interprétation philosophique (Paris, 2004), 10; id., ‘Textes philosophiques et scientifiques’, in Nos sources: arts et littératures syriaques (Sources syriaques 1) (Antélias, 2005), 405–33 (here 405–13).

³The term ‘West Syrian’ is used here to refer to the group that has traditionally been called ‘Jacobite’; the term ‘East Syrian’ will be used below for the group traditionally referred to as ‘Nestorian’.

⁴On Sergius and his works, see S. P. Brock, ‘Sergius of Resh‘aina’, in The Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of Syriac Heritage [= GEDSH], edited by S. P. Brock, A. M. Butts, G. A. Kiraz and L. Van Rompay (Piscataway, forthcoming), with the literature cited there; especially Hugonnard-Roche, La logique d'Aristote (note 2) 123–42, = id., ‘Notes sur Sergius de Reš‘ainā, traducteur du grec en syriaque et commentateur d'Aristote’, in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism, edited by G. Endress and R. Kruk (Leiden, 1997), 121–43, which includes a list of Sergius’ works.

⁵Published in Eduard Sachau, Inedita syriaca. Eine Sammlung syrischer Übersetzungen von Schriften griechischer Profanliteratur (Vienna, 1870), 101–24; cf. Hugonnard-Roche, La logique d'Aristote (note 2), 126–27; id., ‘Textes philosophiques et scientifiques’ (note 2), 413.

⁶Sachau, Inedita syriaca (note 5), 125–26. For the identification as a translation of Paul of Alexandria, see George Saliba, ‘Paulus Alexandrinus in Syriac and Arabic’, Byzantion, 65 (1995), 440–54; cf. id., Islamic Science (note 1), 8.

⁷Grigory Kessel, personal communication, Oct. 2010–Feb. 2011; also G. Kessel, ‘The Syriac Epidemics (MS Damascus Syr. Orth. Patr. 12/25) and its Relation to the Commentary of Galen’, paper presented at the conference ‘Epidemics in Context: Hippocrates, Galen and Hunayn between East and West’, The Warburg Institute, 12–13 November, 2010. On the earlier, evidently false, identification of the work in the manuscript, see Rainer Degen, ‘Galen im Syrischen: eine Übersicht über die syrische Überlieferung der Werke Galens’, in Galen: Problems and Prospect, edited by V. Nutton (London, 1981), 131–66 (here 151). For one further piece of evidence for Sergius’ interest in the mathematical sciences, see E. Fiori, ‘L’épitomé syriaque du Traité sur les causes du tout d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise attribué à Serge de Reš‘aynā’, Le Muséon, 123 (2010), 127–58 (here 145, paragraph VI); cf. Daniel King, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On the Principles of the Universe in a Syriac Adaptation’, Le Muséon, 123 (2010), 159–91 (here 166, with note 30).

⁸On Severus, see G. J. Reinink, ‘Severos Sebokht’, in GEDSH (note 4), with the literature cited there; on his astronomical works in particular, Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden, 1967–2010), VI.111–12 (also V.211–13); Henri Hugonnard-Roche, ‘La scienza siriaca. IV. Matematica e astronomia’, in Storia della scienza, IV. Medioevo Rinascimento, ed. S. Petruccioli (Rome, 2001), 36–41, 69–70 (here 36–38); id., ‘Textes philosophiques et scientifiques’ (note 2), 414–18; John M. McMahon, ‘Severus Sebokht’, in The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, edited by T. Hockey, V. Trimble, T. R. Williams, K. Bracher, R. A. Jarrell, J. D. Marché, F. J. Ragep, J. Palmeri and M. Bolt (New York, 2007), 1044–45; for all of Severus’ astronomical works mentioned here, as well as the two ‘astronomical’ letters of George of the Arabs, we await the new edition and study being undertaken by Edgar Reich (see further note 17 below).

⁹For a detailed description of the manuscript, which in its first part contains a Syriac translation of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos (cf. below), see François Nau, ‘La cosmographie au VIIe siècle chez les Syriens’, Revue de l'Orient chrétien, 15 [= 2e sér. 5] (1919), 225–54. Some of the same material is also found in Mss. British Library, Add. 14,538 (ca. 10th c.) and Berlin, Petermann 26 (1556 A.D.).

¹⁰Published on the basis of the Berlin manuscript by François Nau, ‘Le traité sur l'astrolabe plan de Sévère Sabokt’, Journal asiatique, 9e sér. 13 (1899), 56–101, 238–303; English translation in Robert Theodore Gunther, The Astrolabes of the World (Oxford, 1932), vol. 1, 82–102 (translation made not from Nau's French as stated by McMahon (note 8), but from the Syriac by Mrs. Margoliouth [= Jessie Payne Smith]; see ibid., preface, vii).

¹¹The attribution of this piece to Severus requires further study, since, although it is attributed at its end to Severus, a marginal note ascribes the second chapter (on the lunar eclipse) to George of the Arabs.

¹²Translated by François Nau, ‘Le traité sur les «constellations» écrit, en 661, par Sévère Sébokt évêque de Qennesrin’, Revue de l'Orient chrétien, 27 [3e sér. 7] (1929/30), 327–420, 28 [3e sér. 8] (1931/32), 85–100; excerpts (parts of chapters XVII and XVIII) edited from the London manuscript (Add. 14,538) in Sachau, Inedita syriaca (note 5), 127–34.

¹³The letter was for long known to the academic world only through the excerpts quoted by François Nau (‘Notes d'astronomie syrienne’, Journal asiatique, 10e sér. 16 [1910], 219–27 [here 225–27]; ‘La cosmographie’ (note 9), 248–52; ‘Le traité sur les «constellations»’ (note 12), 332–33); for the text of the whole letter with a German translation, see now Edgar Reich, ‘Ein Brief des Severus Sēḇbōkt’, in Sic itur ad astra. Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften. Festschrift für den Arabisten Paul Kunitzsch zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by M. Folkerts and R. Lorch (Wiesbaden, 2000), 478–89; cf. a partial English translation in Takahashi, ‘Between Greek and Arabic: The Sciences in Syriac from Severus Sebokht to Barhebraeus’, in Transmission of Sciences: Greek, Syriac, Arabic and Latin, edited by Haruo Kobayashi and Mizue Kato (Tokyo, 2010), 16–39 (here 21–23).

¹⁴Cf. Sebastian Brock, ‘From Antagonism to Assimilation: Syriac Attitude to Greek Learning’, in East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period, edited by N. G. Garsoïan, T. F. Mathews and R. W. Thomson (Washington, 1982), 17–34 (here 23–4); Hugonnard-Roche, ‘Textes philosophiques et scientifiques’ (note 2), 414–15. It is rather ironic, and indicative, at the same time, of the ‘supranational’ nature of Syriac, that this Syriac ‘nationalist’ bears a distinctively Persian (sē-bōxt, ‘saved by three’, i.e. ‘by the Trinity’, cf. Philippe Gignoux, Noms propres sassanides en moyen-perse épigraphique [Vienna, 1986], 157), as well as an originally Latin, name.

¹⁵ qadmūt Reich (a form unknown to lexica); qaddī¯mūt Nau, ‘Notes d'astronomie syrienne’ (note 13), 248.

¹⁶The phrase, which is taken from one of the definitions of philosophy in the text of the letter (‘knowledge of those things that are in so far as they are’, īda‘tā d-hālēn d-ītayhōn b-hāy d-ītayh¯n, Reich (note 13), 481, l. 3), derives, of course, from Aristotle's definition of metaphysics as knowledge of being qua being (Metaphysics, Γ1, 1003a 21).

¹⁷Viktor Ryssel, ‘Die astronomischen Briefe Georgs des Araberbischofs’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete, 8 (1893), 1–55; German translation in id., Georgs des Araberbischofs Gedichte und Briefe (Leipzig, 1891), 112–29; cf. Sezgin (note 8), VI.112–14; Saliba, ‘Paulus Alexandrinus’ (note 6), 444–47; Hugonnard-Roche, ‘La scienza siriaca’ (note 8), 38. More generally on George and his letters, see Jack Tannous, ‘Between Christology and Kalām? The Life and Letters of George, Bishop of the Arab Tribes’, in Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone. Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock, edited by G. A. Kiraz (Piscataway, 2008), 671–716; and a new edition and translation of the letters being prepared by Tannous (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, forthcoming).

¹⁸Sebastian P. Brock, ‘Two Letters of the Patriarch Timothy from the Late Eighth Century on Translations from Greek’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 9 (1999), 233–46 (here 236, 240–41). As a recent study on Timothy and his scholarly activities, see Vittorio Berti, Vita e studi di Timoteo I ( +823), patriarca cristiano di Baghdad: Ricerche sull’ epistolario e sulle fonte contigue (Paris, 2009).

¹⁹Joseph Simonius Assemanus, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana (Rome, 1719–28), vol. III/1, 162.

²⁰See Julius Ruska, ‘Studien zu Severus bar Šakkû's Buch der Dialoge’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete, 12 (1897), 8–41, 145–61 (here 9); Rubens Duval, La littérature syriaque, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1907), 278; Berti, Vita e studi di Timoteo I (note 18), 279–80; Anton Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluß der christlich-palästinensischen Texte (Bonn, 1922), 217, n. 9, cf. ibid., 363, s.v. ‘Astrologische Texte’; Hugonnard-Roche, ‘Textes philosophiques et scientifiques’ (note 2), 423: ‘… et il écrivit à propos d'astronomie (peut-être contre l'astrologie).’

²¹See Ibn al-Qiftī's Ta'rīḫ al-hukamā’, edited by Julius Lippert (Leipzig, 1903), 112.11–12: ‘He [Thābit] wrote this book in Syriac, since he was more proficient in it … A disciple … translated it into Arabic, and Thābit corrected the Arabic.’

²² Gregorii Barhebræi Chronicon syriacum, edited by Paul Bedjan (Paris, 1890), 168–69; cf. Ibn al-Qiftī's Ta'rīḫ al-hukamā’ (note 21), 120.14–21; Takahashi, ‘Thābit ibn Qurra’, in GEDSH (note 4).

²³See A. I. Sabra, ‘Thābit ibn Qurra on Euclid's Parallels Postulate’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 31 (1968), 12–32; and Roshdi Rashed and Christian Houzel, ‘Thābit ibn Qurra et la théorie des parallèles’, in Thābit ibn Qurra: Science and Philosophy in Ninth-Century Baghdad, edited by Roshdi Rashed (Berlin, 2009), 27–73.

²⁴According to a count made by Gérard Troupeau, ‘Le rôle des syriaques dans la transmission et l'exploitation du patrimoine philosophique et scientifique grec’, Arabica, 38 (1991), 1–10 (here 4), among the total of 61 translators named in the bibliographical works of Ibn al-Nadīm and Ibn Abī Uṣaibi‘a, there are 48 Syriacs (38 East Syrian, 9 West Syrian and 1 Maronite), eleven Melkites, one ṣābian and one Persian.

²⁵See Gotthelf Bergsträsser, Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq über die syrischen und arabischen Galen-Übersetzungen (Leipzig, 1925), Arabic text 24.4, 24.24, 49.13–14, translation 19–20, 40; cf. Herman Teule, ‘The Transmission of Islamic Culture to the World of Syriac Christianity: Barhebraeus’ Translation of Avicenna's Kitāb al-ishārāt wa l-tanbīhāt. First Soundings’, in Redefining Christian Identity. Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam, edited by J. J. van Ginkel, H. L. Murre-van den Berg and T. M. van Lint (Louvain, 2005), 167–84 (here 168).

²⁶Gotthelf Bergsträsser, Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq über die syrischen und arabischen Galen-Übersetzungen (note 25); and id., Neue Materialien zu Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq's Galen-Bibliographie (Leipzig, 1932). A new edition and translation of the letter are being prepared by John Lamoreaux, Hunayn Ibn Ishaq on His Galen Translations (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, forthcoming).

²⁷See Gad Freudenthal and Tony Lévy, ‘De Gérase à Bagdad: Ibn Bahrīz, Al-Kindī, et leur recension arabe de l’Introduction arithmétique de Nicomaque, d'après la version hébraïque de Qalonymos ben Qalonymos d'Arles’, in De Zénon d'Elée à Poincaré. Recueil d’études en hommage à Roshdi Rashed, edited by R. Morelon and A. Hasnawi (Louvain, 2004), 479–544; cf. Moritz Steinschneider, ‘Die arabischen Uebersetzungen aus dem Griechischen. Zweiter Abschnitt: Mathematik’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 50 (1896), 161–219, 337–417 (here 352); Sezgin (note 8), V.164–65; Hugonnard-Roche, ‘La scienza siriaca’ (note 8), 39; id., ‘Textes philosophiques et scientifiques’ (note 2), 422. On Ibn Bahrīz (‘Abdīshō‘ bar Bahrīz), East Syrian bishop, it is worth noting in this context, of Ḥarrān before becoming metropolitan of Mosul, see B. Roggema, ‘ ‘Abdisho‘ bar Bahrīz’, in GEDSH (note 4), with the literature cited there.

²⁸See Julius Ruska, Das Quadrivium aus Severus bar Šakkû's Buch der Dialoge (Leipzig, 1896).

²⁹Published by Giuseppe Furlani, ‘Bruchstücke einer syrischen Paraphrase der ‘Elemente’ des Eukleides’, Zeitschrift für Semitistik, 3 (1924), 27–52, 212–35.

³⁰See Sezgin (note 8), V.88–90; Hugonnard-Roche, ‘La scienza siriaca’ (note 8), 40; id., ‘Textes philosophiques et scientifiques’ (note 2), 422; Saliba, ‘Revisiting the Syriac Role’ (note 1), 29 (who may be a little too hasty in deciding in favour of Barhebraeus’ authorship); Takahashi, Barhebraeus: a Bio-Bibliography (Piscataway, 2005), 85.

³¹A note about the omission of difficult passages in the Syriac version is quoted in Ms. Istanbul, Fatih 3414 (dated 1277/8); see Sezgin (note 8), V.129.

³²The relevant passage in Qifṭī's Ta'rīkh al-ḥukamā’ (note 21, 195.18–19) is not altogether transparent, but seems to say that corrections were made by Sinān ibn Thābit ibn Qurra to a partial translation from Syriac into Arabic by Yūsuf al-Qass; cf. Steinschneider (note 27), 175; Heinrich Suter, Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke (Leipzig, 1900), 52, 224; Sezgin (note 8), V.135; Hugonnard-Roche, ‘La scienza siriaca’ (note 8), 39, and id., ‘Textes philosophiques et scientifiques’ (note 2), 422 (identifying the work, without explanation, as De mensura circuli).

³³ Ibn al-Qiftī's Ta'rīḫ al-hukamā’ (note 21), 321.16–17; cf. Steinschneider (note 27), 196; Sezgin (note 8), V.159.

³⁴See Paul Kunitzsch, ‘Über einige Spuren der syrischen Almagestübersetzungen’, in Πρισµατα. Naturwissenschaftliche Studien. Festschrift für Willy Hartner, edited by Y. Maeyama and W. G. Saltzer (Wiesbaden, 1977), 203–10; cf. id., Der Almagest. Die Syntaxis Mathematica des Claudius Ptolemäus in arabisch-lateinischer Überlieferung (Wiesbaden, 1974), 7–9; see also George Saliba, ‘The Role of the Almagest Commentaries in Medieval Arabic Astronomy: A Preliminary Survey of Ṭūsī's Redaction of Ptolemy's Almagest’, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, 37 (1987), 3–20 (here 10), reporting a quotation said to be from a Syriac version in a marginal note to Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's redaction of the Almagest (TaḤrīr al-Majisṭī).

³⁵ The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: a Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, translated by Bayard Dodge (New York, 1970), 640; Ibn al-Qiftī's Ta'rīḫ al-hukamā’ (note 21), 98.15; cf. Ernst Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata und die Πoλϵις ϵπισηµoι. Eine untersuchung zur Geschichte der Geographie und Astrologie im Altertum und Mittelalter (Heidelberg, 1929), 116, who thinks the reference may be to the Skariphos.

³⁶This was studied by J. P. N. Land, ‘Aardrijkskundige fragmenten uit de syrische literatuur der zesde en zevende eeuw’, Verslagen en Mededeelingen der k. Akad. van Wetenschappen. Afd. Letterkunde, 3. reeks, 3 (1887), 164–93; cf. Sezgin (note 8), V.213; Witold Witakowski, ‘Geographical Knowledge of the Syrians’, in The Professorship in Semitic Languages at Uppsala University 400 Years: Jubilee Volume from a Symposium Held at the University Hall, 21–23 September 2005 (Studia semitica Upsaliensia 24), edited by Bo Isaksson, Mats Eskhult and Gail Ramsay (Uppsala, 2007), 219–46 (here 233); Mark Dickens, ‘Turkāyē: Turkic Peoples in Syriac Literature Prior to the Seljüks’ (Diss. University of Cambridge, 2008), 21; and now also the annotated English translation in Geoffrey Greatrex, Robert R. Phenix and Cornelia Horn, The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: Church and War in Late Antiquity (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011, which I have not yet seen).

³⁷See Maria Gabriela Schmidt, Die Nebenüberlieferung des 6. Buchs der Geographie des Ptolemaios. Griechische, lateinische, armenische und arabische Texte (Wiesbaden, 1999), 57–66; cf. Dickens (note 36), 75–81; and for a study more generally of the scientific materials in the Hexaemeron, Javier Teixidor, ‘La scienza siriaca. VI. Le scienze naturali secondo l’Hexaemeron’, in Storia della scienza, IV (note 8), 56–66, 70–71. Jacob's account was then used by later Syriac authors, such as Moses bar Kepha (833–903) and Jacob bar Shakko; see Honigmann (note 35), 111; cf. Takahashi, ‘Observations on Bar ‘Ebroyo's Marine Geography’, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies (http://syrcom.cua.edu/hugoye), 6/1 (2003); Witakowski (note 36), 229–30.

³⁸On the sources used by Barhebraeus in his accounts of geography, see Takahashi, ‘Observations’ (note 37).

³⁹See Nau, ‘La cosmographie’ (note 9), 228–29; cf. William H. P. Hatch, An Album of Dated Syriac Manuscripts (Boston, 1946), 191 and Plate CXL (for a page out of the text); Sezgin (note 8), VII.42; Saliba, Islamic Science (note 1), 12. On a quotation from the Pseudo-Ptolemaic Liber fructus (Centiloquium) found in Barhebraeus’ Candelabrum of the Sanctuary (a passage quoted, in turn, as an excerpt from the Candelabrum in Paris, syr. 346), see François Nau, ‘Un fragment syriaque de l'ouvrage astrologique de Claude Ptolémée intitulé le Livre du Fruit’, Revue de l'Orient chrétien, 28 [3e sér. 8] (1931/32), 197–202; cf. id., ‘La cosmographie’ (note 9), 246; Jan Bakos, Le Candélabre des sanctuaries de Grégoire Aboulfaradj dit Barhebraeus (suite) (Paris, 1933), 374.

⁴⁰ Gregorii Barhebræi Chronicon syriacum (note 22), 98.13–18; cf. Takahashi, ‘Between Greek and Arabic’ (note 13), 28.

⁴¹On Bar Shakko in general, see Herman Teule, ‘Jacob bar Šakko, the Book of Treasures and the Syrian Renaissance’, in Eastern Crossroads: Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy, edited by J. P. Monferrer-Sala (Piscataway, 2007), 143–54, with the literature cited there; also Mixail Tolstoluženko, ‘«Kniga sokrovišč» Iakova bar Šakko: bogoslovskaja kompiljacija epoxi sirijskogo renessansa’, Simvol: Žurnal xristianskoj kul'tury osnovannyj Slavjanskoj bibliotekoj v Pariže, 55 (2009), 357–74; id., ‘Iakov bar Šakko o božestvennom promysle’, Simvol, 58 (2010), 156–75.

⁴²Ruska, Das Quadrivium (note 28).

⁴³For an investigation of the sources used in the mineralogical and meteorological section of the Book of Dialogues, which include the Syriac version of the De mundo and the Syriac Book of Treasures by Job of Edessa (d. ca. 835?) alongside more recent Arabic works, see Takahashi, ‘Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Qazwīnī and Bar Shakko¯’, The Harp: A Review of Syriac and Oriental Ecumenical Studies, 19 (2006), 365–79.

⁴⁴On Barhebtraeus’ works on the exact sciences, see Takahashi, Barhebraeus (note 30), 82–85, 384–87; id., ‘Barhebraeus, Gregory Abū al-Faraj’, in The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, edited by T. Hockey, V. Trimble, T. R. Williams, K. Bracher, R. A. Jarrell, J. D. Marché, F. J. Ragep, J. Palmeri and M. Bolt (New York, 2007), 94–95.

⁴⁵We are told, for example, that Barhebraeus’ Arabic work on history, Mukhtaṣar ta'rīkh al-duwal, was composed at the request of the Muslim scholars in Marāgha (Gregorii Barhebraei Chronicon ecclesiasticum, edited by Joannes Baptista Abbeloos and Thomas Josephus Lamy, 2 parts [Louvain, 1872–77], II.469). We are also told by Ḥājjī Khalīfa (d. 1657) that Muḥyi al-Dīn al-Maghribī, one of Ṭūsī's collaborators, composed an epitome of the Almagest at Barhebraeus’ behest (Lexicon bibliographicum et encyclopaedicum a Mustafa ben Abdallah Katib Jelebi dicto nomine Haji Khalfa celebrato compositum, edited by Gustavus Flügel, 7 vols. [Leipzig, 1835–58], V.387, 389).

⁴⁶See Mauro Zonta, Fonti greche e orientali dell’ Economica di Bar-Hebraeus nell’ opera “La crema della scienza” (Annali dell’ Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, Supplemento, 70), (Naples, 1992); Peter N. Joosse, A Syriac Encyclopedia of Aristotelian Philosophy. Barhebraeus (13th c.), Butyrum sapientiae, Books of Ethics, Economy and Politics (Leiden, 2004).

⁴⁷See Aydın Sayılı, ‘Khwāja Naṣīr-i Ṭūsī wa rasadkhāna-i Marāgha’, Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafiya Fakültesi Dergisi, 14 (1956), 1–12 (here 11–12, and plate opposite p. 16); cf. id., The Observatory in Islam and its Place in the General History of the Observatory (Ankara, 1988), 219–22; Takahashi, Barhebraeus (note 30), 82, 127–28.

⁴⁸ Chronicon ecclesiasticum (note 45), II.443.1–2, 19–20.

⁴⁹Both meanings are possible with the Syriac verb used (shrā), which, with its basic meaning of ‘to loosen’, corresponds in many of its senses to Arabic Ḥalla.

⁵⁰ Cream of Wisdom, Book of First Philosophy, 1.1.1; Ms. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, or. 83, fol. 130v, right column, l. 11–12. Cf. the passage at the end of the Book of Theology quoted at Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology in Syriac: Barhebraeus, Butyrum sapientiae, Books of Mineralogy and Meteorology (Leiden, 2004), 586.

⁵¹Edited and translated by François Nau, Le livre de l'ascension de l'esprit sur la forme du ciel et de la terre. Cours d'astronomie rédigé en 1279 par Grégoire Aboulfarag, dit Bar-Hebraeus, 2 parts (Paris, 1899).

⁵²Nau, Le livre de l'ascension (note 51), seconde partie, vii.

⁵³See Takahashi, ‘The Greco-Syriac and Arabic Sources of Barhebraeus’ Mineralogy and Meteorology in Candelabrum sanctuarii, Base II’, Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 56 (2004), 191–209 (here 202–203); id., ‘Between Greek and Arabic’ (note 13), 27–28.

⁵⁴Taro Mimura, personal communication, Aug.–Dec. 2010, to whom I also owe the following observation about the ‘Ptolemaic’ character of the Ascent of the Mind.

⁵⁵See Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology (note 50), 11–14.

⁵⁶Nau, Le livre de l'ascension (note 51), text 106–107, translation 91. On the evidence for the use of Severus’ Treatise on the Constellations in another work of Barhebraeus (Book of Rays), see Takahashi, ‘Bemerkungen zum Buch der Blitze (Ktobo d-zalge) des Barhebraeus’, in Die Suryoye und ihre Umwelt. 4. deutsches Syrologen-Symposium in Trier 2004, edited by M. Tamcke and A. Heinz (Münster, 2005), 407–22 (here 417–18); id., ‘Between Greek and Arabic’ (note 13), 26.

⁵⁷Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology (note 50), 110.

⁵⁸ Ibn Sīnā, Al-Shifā’. La Physique V – Les Métaux et Météorologie, edited by ‘Abd el-Ḥalīm Montaṣir, Sa‘īd Zayed and ‘Abdallāh Ismā‘īl (Cairo, 1964), 24.8–25.1, 25.9–10.

⁵⁹ Le “Petit commentaire” de Théon d'Alexandrie aux Tables faciles de Ptolémée, edited by Anne Tihon (Vatican City, 1978), 236.4–237.2; translation here based on Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy (Berlin, 1975), 632.

⁶⁰The same passage of Theon was also used by Barhebraeus in his Chronicon (edition by Bedjan, note 22, 54.7–26) and Ascent of the Mind (edition by Nau, note 51, 103.22–104.5). For further details, see Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology (note 50), 324–329.

⁶¹Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, Sachau 81, and Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Syriac 7. See, respectively, Eduard Sachau, Verzeichnis der syrischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin, 1899), 620–24; and Takahashi, ‘Also via Istanbul to Yale: Mss. Yale Syriac 7–12’, in Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas, edited by D. Reisman and F. Opwis (Leiden, forthcoming); cf. id., ‘Excerpts from the Chronicle of Patriarch Michael I in Mss. Berlin Sachau 81 and Yale Syriac 7’, in The Edessa-Aleppo Syriac Codex of the Chronicle of Michael the Great (Texts and Translations of the Chronicle of Michael the Great 1), edited by Gregorios Yuhanna Ibrahim (Piscataway, 2010), xxxiii-xxxvii. Digital images of the Yale manuscript are accessible online on the website of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/). A further copy of the letter was once in the possession of the Syrian Orthodox patriarch Ignatius Ephrem I Barṣaum (patriarch 1933–57), and may still be in the manuscript collection of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate (see Ignatius Aphram I Barsoum, The Scattered Pearls, translated by Matti Moosa, 2nd edition [Piscataway, 2003], 513, n. 4).

⁶²This word is unknown to Syriac dictionaries, but is no doubt derived from (Ottoman) Turkish leh ‘Pole’.

⁶³On Patriarch Ni‘matallah's activities in Italy, see Giorgio Levi della Vida, Documenti intorno alle relazioni delle chiese orientali con la S. Sede durante il pontificato di Gregorio XIII (Vatican City, 1948); and for the role he played in the calendar reform, August Ziggelaar, ‘The Papal Bull of 1582 Promulgating a Reform of the Calendar’, in Gregorian Reform of the Calendar, edited by G. V. Coyne, M. A. Hoskin and O. Pedersen (Vatican City, 1983), 201–39.

⁶⁴Ziggelaar (note 63), 218, 220–21.

⁶⁵For the original text of the passage referred to, see Nau, Le livre de l'ascension (note 51), text 193, translation 171. The explanation ‘or the opposition which occurs between the sun and the moon’, and the phrase ‘twenty-seven days after it’ are additions by Ni‘matallah.

⁶⁶Carl Ehrig-Eggert, personal communication, Aug. 2009, based on his paper ‘Le patriarche Ignatius Ni‘matallah et sa contribution à la réforme du calendrier (1579–1580)’, presented at the VIIIe Congrès d’études arabes chrétiennes (Granada, 26–27 September, 2008); cf. Ziggelaar (note 63), 162–63.