Boris Liebrenz: The Arabic Aristotle in Byzantine Constantinople

Boris Liebrenz: “The Arabic Aristotle in Byzantine Constantinople,” in: Medieval Encounters 31 (2025), pp. 339-61. https://brill.com/view/journals/me/31/4/article-p339_3.xml 

Abstract

The reception of classical Greek authors such as Aristotle into Arabic literature through translations is well known. The presence of Arabic literature in the Byzantine capital is much less attested, nor is it widely expected. Could Aristotle have returned to the center of Greek culture in Arab garb? Who would have been the audience of this translation? Who would have brought it there and for what purpose? A famous manuscript now preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris shows that, indeed, at least one Anatolian Muslim scholar studied his Arabic Aristotle in Constantinople long before it was conquered by the Ottomans. The article uses minute manuscript notes as a means to provide surprising context for the literature that scholars tend to study as disembodied texts.