This is a dissertation project on medieval Arabic rhetoric and philosophy that focuses on the innovative nature of the knowledge produced while translating and commenting on foreign works of science and philosophy in Abbasid Baghdad. Chapter One challenges colonial attitudes toward the Translation Movement as exclusively imitative and preservative. The chapter shows that the translations had practical and ideological purposes to fulfill, not simply archival ones. Translation genres are discussed to show how deletions, additions, and new material were introduced during the translation process to ensure that that translation work met the goals of the sponsors. The work of the most renowned translator, Hunayn Ibn Ishaq is discussed in some detail to illustrate the process of translation and to show that translation overlapped with knowledge making. The chapter also covers the translation done in fields such as medicine, astronomy, and philosophy. Chapter Two covers how the work of theorists such as Edward Said, Michel Foucault, and Mikhail Bakhtin enabled me to challenge an Orientalist attitude toward medieval Arabic philosophy as was as show its innovative nature. In Chapter Three, I provide a translation of al-Kindi's "A Statement on the Soul," followed by an analysis of the epistemological and persuasive significance of the treatise. The chapter illustrates how the Arabic engagement with Greek and Neo-Platonic knowledge was dialogic in nature. Chapter Four is a translation of al-Farabi's book of rhetoric. Chapter Five is an analysis of al-Farabi's theory of rhetoric that is based on the previous chapter. It focuses on his understanding of rhetoric as a logical art, how logical and rhetorical terms acquired new meanings when translated from Greek to Arabic in his work, and the rhetorical nature of his work as he adapted Platonic and Aristotelian models to suit his monotheistic context.

Il presente studio ha a tema la versione araba del testo greco noto tra gli studiosi come De aeternitate mundi, Sull’eternità del cosmo, del filosofo Proclo (410-485 d. C.). Scopo della ricerca è mettere in luce la ricezione dottrinale e linguistica degli argomenti eternalisti procliani in traduzione araba. In arabo ci sono pervenute due traduzioni di parte degli argomenti eternalisti di Proclo, un fatto di grande interesse perché essi andarono ad alimentare, insieme a quelli creazionisti dell’avversario Filopono, uno dei primi dibattiti su cui le opinioni nel panorama intellettuale arabo musulmano si divisero: l’origine del mondo. Un confronto linguistico tra le due versioni del testo procliano mostra in primis che la prima traduzione, anonima, condivide una grammatica dottrinale e linguistica con le traduzioni nate nel cosiddetto “circolo di al-Kindi” (IX secolo), ed è pertanto riconducibile al filosofo arabo, per quanto sostenitore dell’inizio temporale del cosmo. Elementi linguistici e stilistici rendono inoltre ragione dell’«eloquenza», fasāḥa, che rese famoso il presunto traduttore della seconda versione degli argomenti procliani, Ishaq ib Hunayn (m. 911), ma allo stesso tempo mostrano come egli erediti le elaborazioni dottrinali della traduzione anteriore, probabilmente all’origine dell’interesse per gli argomenti procliani e per una loro seconda traduzione in epoca ad essa successiva. / This work focuses on the Arabic translation of the Greek treatise known as De aeternitate mundi, On the eternity of the world, written by the philosopher Proclus in the fifth century a.d. Its purpose is to enlight the doctrinal and linguistic reception of Proclus’ proofs of the eternity of the world in their Arabic translations. First, the interest in the mentioned proofs is due to the fact that they are considered, together with the opponent Giovanni Filopono’s creationist ones, one of the main sources for the initial debate for natural theology and philosophy, where opinions of Muslim divided: the inquiry concerning whether the world is eternal or had a beginning. A linguistic comparison between the two translation shows that the most ancient translation shares a common doctrinal and linguistic grammar with the texts borne in the so called “Circle of al-Kindi”, (IX century). Therefore, it can be linked to the Arabic philosopher, although he was in support of the temporal beginning of the world. In addition to that, it apparently gives reasons for the fasāḥa, “eloquence”, that made famous the presumed translator of the second version of the Arabic proclian proofs: Ishaq ibn Hunayn (m. 911), but at the same time shows that he inherited the doctrinal contents that the first translator developed in his version. It is this doctrinal development that apparently raised the interest for the proclian text and that justifies their second translation.