All works mentioned in the ‘‘classical’’ Greek reports on Plato’s auvre, such as those by Thrasyllus, Albinus, and Galen, were known by title to the Arabic-writing bibliographers and historians. The earliest and most comprehensive Arabic discussion of the Platonic corpus is found in a treatise entitled The Philosophy of Plato (ed. Rosenthal and Walzer 1943). This treatise, which is usually ascribed to the philosopher al-Farabi, describes Plato’s works in a non-tetralogical arrangement reflecting the supposed development of Plato’s thought. It certainly draws on Greek sources, presumably Galen or other closely related Middle Platonic sources (cf. Tarrant 1993:32-38). Another pinax, preserved in Ibn al-Nadim’s Fihrist, is based on at least two other sources. The first source Ibn al-Nadim is referring to is the tetralogical arrangement of Plato’s dialogues provided by the mathematician Theon of Smyrna, while it is not quite clear whether Ibn al-Nadim indeed follows strictly Theon’s system of division (cf. Lippert 1894:39-50; Tarrant 1993:58-68). Second, Ibn al-Nadlm’s account is at least partly indebted to the catalogue of philosophical and scientific books prepared by one of his contemporaries, the philosopher Yahiya ibn 'Adi. This catalogue must have drawn on further sources, as the dialogue Critias is referred to under the title Atlanticus, which corresponds with Thrasyllus (as reported by Diogenes Laertius), but not with Theon. While the bibliography in Ibn al-Qifti’s Tdrtkh al-Jtukamd is heavily indebted to Ibn al-Nadim’s Fihrist, Ibn Abi Utaybi'a must have had access to additional sources. He not only mentions dialogues omitted in the lists of Ibn al-Nadim and Ibn al-Qifti (such as Epinomis, Lysis, and Politicus), but also refers by transliterations of the Greek titles to some dialogues mentioned in the earlier bibliographies by Arabicized titles or descriptions only (cf. Gutas forthcoming). With the exception of al-Farabi, all bibliographers mention also spuria that cannot be related to any Greek pinax of Platonic works. They also sometimes include the same work twice which points to the fact that the bibliographers used more than one Graeco-Arabic source, without being able to identify different references to one and the same work.
World History
