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The Aristotelian Tradition in Syriac
This volume presents a panorama of Syriac engagement with Aristotelian philosophy primarily situated in the 6th to the 9th centuries, but also ranging to the 13th. It offers a wide range of articles, opening with surveys on the most important philosophical writers of the period before providing detailed studies of two Syriac prolegomena to Aristotle’s Categories and examining the works of Hunayn, the most famous Arabic translator of the 9th century. Watt also examines the relationships between philosophy, rhetoric and political thought in the period, and explores the connection between earlier Syriac tradition and later Arabic philosophy in the thought of the 13th century Syriac polymath Bar Hebraeus. Collected together for the first time, these articles present an engaging and thorough history of Aristotelian philosophy during this period in the Near East, in Syriac and Arabic.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published March 1, 2019
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August 3, 2019
The hysteria on the ground and in the media surrounding the explosion of the Islamic State onto the global stage in 2014 led to frantic apologetics via the falsification of the achievements of the former caliphates, namely that of the Abassid dynasty centred in the newly-built capital, Baghdad. Central to the claim was the belief that Muslim Arab philosophers and scientists translated and preserved Greek philosophy, an act which supposedly ensured its survival after its abandonment in the “Dark Ages” of post-Roman and up the Norman conquest of 1066.
All of this ignores or fails to demonstrate how the Greek philosophy, both itself and the study of it, traversed the lands between Athens and Baghdad, a history which collection of articles covers and proves to go directly against the narrative fed to viewers who had very little awareness of Baghdad’s history prior to Iraq’s rise in regional politics. Given the assembly of the book, the content often overlaps between chapters and reinforces the facts and arguments, proving essential for readers new or barely-versed in the subject. Along with the fact that Watt gives very little contextual information, it’d benefit readers to perform some research regarding the late-Byzantine to early-Abassid eras and the political environment in the Near East. Very little is left to assumption, Watt uses induction, deduction, abduction and manuscript evidence to reconstruct events or material no longer extent in archives.
We are introduced to a number of key figures from the Syriac-speaking East, namely Sergius of Reshaina, Athanasius of Balad, Job of Edessa and Hunayn ibn Ishaq. Through these clerics, philosophers and physicians, we can trace the physical and metaphysical spread of Aristotelian and Christianised Neo-Platonic philosophy from Alexandria to urban and monastic centres before eventually converging on Baghdad as a result of a number of factors. We are reminded that the Roman world and its successor state, the Eastern Roman “Byzantine” Empire, were synthesised cultures with many bilingual citizens, whether it be Latin and Greek or Syriac and Greek. Through this Greco-Syriac elite in the Syrian churches, the corpus of Aristotelian literature made its way into Syriac because of its necessity in religious, philosophical and medical circles. With the growth of Baghdad and the establishment of the House of Wisdom, the Baghdad Aristotelians grew and wealthy Baghdadi Arabs commissioned the Syriac Christians to translate the texts into Arabic. Hunayn, the master of Arabic, translated many texts including medical works by Galen, although the majority were Syriac because there was a greater practical need among physicians and clerics than among wealthy Muslims looking to grow their collection of books. In particular, the Nestorian Christians had not only been studying philosophy, they had become renowned physicians from their education at Gundishapur and quickly came to dominate the positions of the Abassid court. Watt paints a vivid picture of the positions of the different groups within the philosophical sphere; he lists the patrons of the Syriac translations as Syriac physicians, with the rest being wealthy patrons who had no relation to the medical field except for the Jewish Ishaq ibn Sulayman. The Syriac domination was to diminish over the course of the 9th century as more Muslim students, producing the likes of Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi and the subsequent influence it had on Al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes).
Beyond the inevitable disagreements over philosophy within the Muslim sphere, it is surprising to learn the extent to which they went to falsify history to discredit the very people they inherited the art from. Al-Farabi, the one held in great esteem and dubbed “The Second Teacher” (after Aristotle) by Avicenna, claimed in his famous text “The Appearance of Philosophy” that it was the Christians who actually held back philosophy’s development. In an explicitly contradictory account, he tells us that philosophy was simultaneously taught in Rome and Alexandria until the advent of Christianity severely restricted it in Alexandria and ended it in Rome. He goes on to claim that the bishops decided that the study of logic of logic beyond the assertoric figures was harmful to Christianity. Eventually, the teaching of philosophy supposedly reached Antioch where only a single teacher survived along with two disciples, one from Harran in Mesopotamia and one from Merv in northern Iran. Each disciple had two disciples of their own, all four of whom reached Baghdad. One of them, Al-Marwazi, had a Christian student, Abu Bishr Matta, who indeed went on to establish the Aristotelian school in Baghdad, and the other, Yuhanna ibn Haylan, was Al-Farabi’s mentor. Then, he contradicts the attacks he made on the Christians by stating that he studied the Analytica Posteriora under Yuhanna, a work which went beyond the assertoric figures! Again, Ibn Al-Nadim later claims that philosophy was manifested among the Greeks and Romans until it became forbidden under the Christian emperors until Julian’s reign. Julian’s untimely death saw Constantine crowned as emperor by the Sasanian shah Shapur and the empire returning to its bigoted Christian ways with philosophical texts gathering dusts in libraries until his era. Not only has philosophy’s place within the Christian world been falsified, so too has the timeline of the Western world. Constantine died 26 years before Julian and Shapur had nothing to do his ascension to the throne, in fact, Shapur (II) punished the Christians in his realm to spite Constantine. On the other side, we have evidence of fraternal dialogue between the head of the Muslim world, Caliph Al-Mahdi, and the head of the Church of the East, patriarchy Timothy III. Al-Mahdi considered Timothy his Christian counterpart in the global world view and even requested he translate Aristole’s Topics into Arabic.
Perhaps the best way to summarise the role of the Syriac Christians in the world of Aristotelian philosophy is to paraphrase a well-known Arabic anecdote from 9th century Baghdad by Al-Jahiz, an Arab doctor complaining about his lack of patients, saying that his problem was his name which is Asad and not Saliba or Yuhanna and that he spoke Arabic and not Aramaic.
All of this ignores or fails to demonstrate how the Greek philosophy, both itself and the study of it, traversed the lands between Athens and Baghdad, a history which collection of articles covers and proves to go directly against the narrative fed to viewers who had very little awareness of Baghdad’s history prior to Iraq’s rise in regional politics. Given the assembly of the book, the content often overlaps between chapters and reinforces the facts and arguments, proving essential for readers new or barely-versed in the subject. Along with the fact that Watt gives very little contextual information, it’d benefit readers to perform some research regarding the late-Byzantine to early-Abassid eras and the political environment in the Near East. Very little is left to assumption, Watt uses induction, deduction, abduction and manuscript evidence to reconstruct events or material no longer extent in archives.
We are introduced to a number of key figures from the Syriac-speaking East, namely Sergius of Reshaina, Athanasius of Balad, Job of Edessa and Hunayn ibn Ishaq. Through these clerics, philosophers and physicians, we can trace the physical and metaphysical spread of Aristotelian and Christianised Neo-Platonic philosophy from Alexandria to urban and monastic centres before eventually converging on Baghdad as a result of a number of factors. We are reminded that the Roman world and its successor state, the Eastern Roman “Byzantine” Empire, were synthesised cultures with many bilingual citizens, whether it be Latin and Greek or Syriac and Greek. Through this Greco-Syriac elite in the Syrian churches, the corpus of Aristotelian literature made its way into Syriac because of its necessity in religious, philosophical and medical circles. With the growth of Baghdad and the establishment of the House of Wisdom, the Baghdad Aristotelians grew and wealthy Baghdadi Arabs commissioned the Syriac Christians to translate the texts into Arabic. Hunayn, the master of Arabic, translated many texts including medical works by Galen, although the majority were Syriac because there was a greater practical need among physicians and clerics than among wealthy Muslims looking to grow their collection of books. In particular, the Nestorian Christians had not only been studying philosophy, they had become renowned physicians from their education at Gundishapur and quickly came to dominate the positions of the Abassid court. Watt paints a vivid picture of the positions of the different groups within the philosophical sphere; he lists the patrons of the Syriac translations as Syriac physicians, with the rest being wealthy patrons who had no relation to the medical field except for the Jewish Ishaq ibn Sulayman. The Syriac domination was to diminish over the course of the 9th century as more Muslim students, producing the likes of Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi and the subsequent influence it had on Al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes).
Beyond the inevitable disagreements over philosophy within the Muslim sphere, it is surprising to learn the extent to which they went to falsify history to discredit the very people they inherited the art from. Al-Farabi, the one held in great esteem and dubbed “The Second Teacher” (after Aristotle) by Avicenna, claimed in his famous text “The Appearance of Philosophy” that it was the Christians who actually held back philosophy’s development. In an explicitly contradictory account, he tells us that philosophy was simultaneously taught in Rome and Alexandria until the advent of Christianity severely restricted it in Alexandria and ended it in Rome. He goes on to claim that the bishops decided that the study of logic of logic beyond the assertoric figures was harmful to Christianity. Eventually, the teaching of philosophy supposedly reached Antioch where only a single teacher survived along with two disciples, one from Harran in Mesopotamia and one from Merv in northern Iran. Each disciple had two disciples of their own, all four of whom reached Baghdad. One of them, Al-Marwazi, had a Christian student, Abu Bishr Matta, who indeed went on to establish the Aristotelian school in Baghdad, and the other, Yuhanna ibn Haylan, was Al-Farabi’s mentor. Then, he contradicts the attacks he made on the Christians by stating that he studied the Analytica Posteriora under Yuhanna, a work which went beyond the assertoric figures! Again, Ibn Al-Nadim later claims that philosophy was manifested among the Greeks and Romans until it became forbidden under the Christian emperors until Julian’s reign. Julian’s untimely death saw Constantine crowned as emperor by the Sasanian shah Shapur and the empire returning to its bigoted Christian ways with philosophical texts gathering dusts in libraries until his era. Not only has philosophy’s place within the Christian world been falsified, so too has the timeline of the Western world. Constantine died 26 years before Julian and Shapur had nothing to do his ascension to the throne, in fact, Shapur (II) punished the Christians in his realm to spite Constantine. On the other side, we have evidence of fraternal dialogue between the head of the Muslim world, Caliph Al-Mahdi, and the head of the Church of the East, patriarchy Timothy III. Al-Mahdi considered Timothy his Christian counterpart in the global world view and even requested he translate Aristole’s Topics into Arabic.
Perhaps the best way to summarise the role of the Syriac Christians in the world of Aristotelian philosophy is to paraphrase a well-known Arabic anecdote from 9th century Baghdad by Al-Jahiz, an Arab doctor complaining about his lack of patients, saying that his problem was his name which is Asad and not Saliba or Yuhanna and that he spoke Arabic and not Aramaic.
February 7, 2026
This book was so enjoyable and entertaining to read. The mix of history and philosophy was so well balanced. It is really a corrective history, deconstructing the “white legend” of the Islamic saving of Aristotle’s works, with a well documented history of Aristotelian history through the Syriac Christians to the conquering Arabs. I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in a long while.
Note when I was on page 163:
Sergius of Rashaina, Hanayn Ibn Ashaq, the monastery of Qenneshre, Timothy I... the actual history Aristotelianism in the Islamic Arab world was absolutely thanks to, and through, the Syriac Christians. Mind blown. I have believed myths of the intellectual Muslims for too long.
Note when I was on page 231:
This book is so fun in a myriad of ways. There is the learning of history concerning the writings of Aristotle, fascinating and eye opening in its own right. But the study intrinsically shows the good use (or intention) of sound philosophy being used for leadership of empires and monasteries, kingdoms and cities.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews