The Ṣābi’ans of Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī
(2017) “Greek into Arabic. Philosophical Concepts and Linguistic Bridges”, seminar organized by Cristina D’Ancona — Location: Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore (13.March.2017)
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- Abstract
- The Ṭabaqāt al-umam opens with an account of the seven primeval nations patently taken from Mas‘ūdī’s Tanbīh. At the end of Ṣā‘id’s version, however, we are told that ‘these seven nations, which together constituted the whole of mankind, were all Ṣābi’ans’ – an indication not found in the Oriental model. Several references to Ṣābi’ans 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. It is to these mentions of ‘the Ṣābi’ans’ as found in conjunction with nearly all the nations considered by Ṣā‘id that this paper is dedicated. We shall examine the place which each of these groups of Ṣābi’ans occupies in the overall scheme and try to reconstruct from these indications a plausible and coherent ‘chronology of the ancient and modern nations’ as Ṣā‘id may have conceived it. In the final part, we shall seek to better understand for which reason Ṣā‘id seems to have attached such an importance to the Ṣābi’ans in his work.
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de Callatay, G. (2017). The Ṣābi’ans of Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī. “Greek into Arabic. Philosophical Concepts and Linguistic Bridges”, seminar organized by Cristina D’Ancona, Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/179393