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.

This thesis takes up the question of the part played by Syriac sources in the composition of early Arabic translations of the Hippocratic Aphorisms. In it, I compare the four major extant Syriac and Arabic translations of the Aphorisms with continual reference to the content of Syriac lexicons composed by the translator Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and his students and successors. Through detailed treatments of both the definitions and translations of scores of individual Greek terms found in these sources, as well as through analysis of the translations of the Aphorisms, I weigh the relative importance of Greek and Syriac scholarship for Ḥunayn's translation praxis. In doing so, I specify the value of the Syriac lexicons for the study of Greek-to-Arabic translation while clarifying several outstanding issues in the broader history of Syriac and Arabic medicine.