The Ṣābi’ans of Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī
(2017) Studia Graeco - Arabica — Vol. 7, p. 291-306 (2017)
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- Abstract
- The Ṭabaqāt al-umam opens with an account of the seven primeval nations taken from Masʿūdī’s Tanbīh. At the end of Ṣāʿid’s version, however, we are told that “these seven nations, which together constituted the whole of mankind, were all Ṣābiʾans” – an indication not found in the Oriental model. Several references to Ṣābiʾans also appear in the core of the Ṭabaqāt, a definitely more original section of the work in which the author reports the achievements of the eight nations (Indians, Persians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Arabs, and Jews) which in his view contributed to the improvement of science. The present paper examines all these passages. We try to determine where the author of the Ṭabaqāt situates these groups of Ṣābiʾans in the overall history of the nations, and we ask ourselves to what extent these groups may be regarded as continuators or remnants of the primordial Ṣābiʾans.
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de Callatay, G. (2017). The Ṣābi’ans of Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī. Studia Graeco - Arabica, 7, 291-306. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/119870 (Original work published 2017)