Ibn AbI Usaybi‘a (d. 1270) reports that the famous scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Lat. Alhazen, d. 1038) might have written a treatise on the Greek and Arabic tradition of the Poetics. On this tradition, also the scientist Abti l-Barakat al-BajgdadI (d. after 1164-1165) wrote in his Kitab al-mu‘tabar, an abridgment of the work came by al-KhwarizmI, the tenth century author of MafatTh al-‘ulum (Keys of the Sciences).
In spite of the rich poetical tradition of the Arabs, the Poetics was completely misunderstood in the Muslim world, due to inadequacies in the available translation of the Poetics. Abti Bishr’s version, which lacks the last part, is very literal, but it attempts to interpret Aristotle - and fails in its goal.
The Arabs were unfamiliar with any of the Greek tragedies and, consequently, they were hindered from catching the sense of Greek poetry and of the Poetics in its Greek application. Hence, a proper understanding of technical terms such as peripeteia or anagnorisis was impossible for them.
The religious beliefs of the Arabs hindered them from a full comprehension of the concept of mimesis itself. Nobody can be a creator, apart from God; the Arabic word for ‘‘poetry’’ is shi‘r (originally ‘‘hair’’), while the idea of ‘‘making,’’ contained in the Greek poiesis, is completely absent. In addition, the Qur’an strictly distinguishes prophecy from poetry (69:40; 36:69) and denies poetry value because of its untruthfulness (26:224).
However, the Arabs were interested in Aristotle’s Poetics, perhaps thanks to the influence of the Persian culture and vision of life. If it is impossible to find in the Arabic tradition of the Poetics any help for a critical knowledge of the original, the Arab elaborations of this work are noteworthy.
Greek commentators had organized the Poetics and the Rhetoric as the last parts of Aristotle’s Organon. This asset came to the Arabs via the Syriac tradition, and it explains why the Poetics took its new ‘‘logical’’ coloring in Arabic.
According to the geographer al-Ya‘qtibI (d. in the early tenth century), the philosopher al-KindI (d. c. 870) wrote a short commentary on the Poetics. Al-FarabI (d. 950) and Ibn SIna (Avicenna, d. 1057) provided logic-oriented accounts of the work, evaluating poetry in its relation to truth.
Al-FarabI, who might have known Abui Bishr’s translation, gave a short account of the contents of the work
And a theoretical treatment of poetry in his Kitab al-shi‘r. For him, the poetical syllogism was used in the Sacred Books to make the truth attainable by everybody.
Avicenna, sometimes judged as more faithful to Aristotle than Averroes, studied the relation between takhyil (“imaginative representation,” occurring in poetic syllogisms) and tflsdiq (‘‘assent’’ that occurs in demonstrative syllogisms).
As to Averroes (d. 1198), who probably relied on al-Farabl and Avicenna, two commentaries of his on the Poetics are known: the Short (written before 1153) and the Middle Commentary (1175). Perhaps his source was not Abu Bishr, but another version now lost.
The Middle Commentary is a treatise of aesthetics, on the rules that should produce a good qastda (the classical ode of the Arabs). Arabic poets are critically examined; so, the Greek original is adapted to the Arabic tradition, where poetry plays a role in maintaining individuals’ consciousness of their group and their contribution to its virtues. Hence, ‘‘good poetry’’ coincides with ‘‘morally good’’ poetry, while the terms and concepts of ‘‘tragedy’’ and ‘‘comedy’’ are completely misunderstood, and substituted by the terms mahd and hija, respectively, ‘‘praise’’ and ‘‘satire.’’
World History
