A Critical Edition (together with introduction and English translation) of the Pseudo-Avicenna Liber Celi et Mundi, a Latin translation from Arabic of a paraphrase of Aristotle's De Caelo. It was translated in Spain in the later twelfth century, almost certainly by Dominicus Gundissalinus and Johannes Hispanus. The text circulated widely in Western Europe in the later Middle Ages, in collections of the early Latin translations of the Aristotelian corpus and of the Arabic commentaries. The Origins of the Liber Celi et Mundi are unknown but the editor suggests that the author may have been the prolific Arabic translator, Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq. This edition will be of particular interest to students of the Aristotelian tradition and the Arabic and Latin translators.

An hommage to Gad Freudenthal, this volume offers studies on the history of science and on the role of science in medieval and early-modern Jewish cultures, investigating various aspects of processes of knowledge transfer and scientific cross-cultural contacts,

Through close study of Avicenna's statements and major works, Dimitri Gutas traces Avicenna's own sense of his place in the Aristotelian tradition and the history of philosophy in Islam, and provides an introduction to reading his philosophical works by delineating the approach most consistent with Avicenna's intention and purpose in philosophy. The second edition of this foundational work, which has quickened fruitful research into the philosopher in the last quarter century, is completely revised and updated, and adds a new final chapter summarizing Avicenna's philosophical project. It is also enlarged with the addition of a new appendix which offers a critical inventory of Avicenna's authentic works, updating the work of Mahdavi (1954) with additional information on all manuscripts and important editions and translations. Its usefulness enhanced, the book provides primary orientation to Avicenna's philosophy and works and constitutes an indispensable research tool for their study. Winner of the I. R. Iran World Award for the Book of the Year 2014

This collection of essays covers the classical heritage and Islamic culture, classical Arabic science and philosophy, and Muslim religious sciences, showing continuation of Greek and Persian thought as well as original Muslim contributions to the sciences, philosophy, religion, and culture of Islam.

The Andalusian Muslim philosopher Averroes (1126–1198) is known for his authoritative commentaries on Aristotle and for his challenging ideas about the relationship between philosophy and religion, and the place of religion in society. Among Jewish authors, he found many admirers and just as many harsh critics. This volume brings together, for the first time, essays investigating Averroes’s complex reception, in different philosophical topics and among several Jewish authors, with special attention to its relation to the reception of Maimonides.

"The world is a finite body, and therefore has finite power." John Philoponus is remembered for using this Aristotelian premise to break ranks with Aristotle and argue that the world is not everlasting. This investigation reconsiders Philoponus’s arguments from finite power, and then explores the aftermath of this line of thinking in the works of three lesser-known Arabic intellectuals active in the generation before Avicenna (d. 1037): Abū l-Ḫayr Ibn Suwār (d. after 1017), Abū al-Ḥasan al-ʿĀmirī (d. 992), and Abū Sahl al-Masīḥī (d. after 1025). Each engaged with this dictum in unique and novel ways, and in so doing anticipated a number of central features of Avicenna’s writings. The history of this argument is of crucial importance for understanding the evolution of natural philosophy and metaphysics in this formative period, away from tedious and simplistic arguments about creation and towards a more robust modal ontology based on intrinsic and extrinsic necessity.

In January 1998 leading scholars from Europe, the United States, and Israel in the fields of medieval encyclopedias (Arabic, Latin and Hebrew) and medieval Jewish philosophy and science gathered together at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, for an international conference on medieval Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy. The primary purpose of the conference was to explore and define the structure, sources, nature, and characteristics of the medieval Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy. This book, the first to devote itself to the medieval Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy, contains revised versions of the papers that were prepared for this conference. This volume also includes an annotated translation of Moritz Steinschneider's groundbreaking discussion of this subject in his Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen. The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy will be of particular interest to students of medieval philosophy and science, Jewish intellectual history, the history of ideas, and pre-modern Western encyclopedias.