Von Demokrit bis Dante: Die Bewahrung antiken Erbes in der arabischen Kultur

In the Olms series of collectanea (comparable to, if heftier than, Variorum Reprints), Gotthard Strohmaier’s wide-ranging studies are assured of a place of honor. He has devoted his scholarly labors to a truly demanding field: the elucidation and reconstruction of the complex, fragmentarily preserved, and thus at times obscure transmission of Greek learning and lore to Arabic, and from Arabic to medieval Latin.

In addition to the requisite knowledge of languages—not only the source languages (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Hebrew, Arabic, and medieval Western idioms), but also those of modern scholarship (not least among them, Russian)—Strohmaier wields the well-tested and durable tools of classical philology. The present volume provides ample testimony that these tools have stood him in good stead (and one may add that nobody dealing with written sources can disregard them with impunity). Yet, like any given method, this one has its limits, as Strohmaier’s forays into problems of metahistory show: issues like “stagnation” and the perceived nonoccurrence of the Renaissance in Islamic culture demand a far more reflective and subtle approach than he appears to adopt. However, this in no way detracts from his solid work in the vast area delimited by the chronological signposts of the title: Democritus and Dante. Further, the volume testifies to the integrity of historical scholarship under duress—under the now defunct East German regime.

The volume comprises sixty articles, all but nine of which are in German (five are in English, four in French); they are arranged in eight sections and completed by a preface, the author’s bibliography (arranged chronologically), and references to the original publication of the reprinted studies. The eight major divisions are as follows (here translated from the original German): (1) “Arabic witnesses regarding Greek philosophers”; (2) “Ancient medical history”; (3) “Arabic-Islamic intellectual and religious history”; (4) “The Baghdad translators’ achievement”; (5) “History of Arabic philosophy”; (6) “History of Arabic medicine and science”; (7) “The world of Islam and the European Middle Ages”; (8) “History of Arabic studies and current tasks in textual criticism and edition.”

While the study of the Arabic transmission of Greek medicine, and particularly editorial work on Galenus arabus, have been at the center of Strohmaier’s academic activities, his interests extend far afield. He has traced classical lore as reflected and refracted through the prisms of such minds as H.unayn ibn Ish.āq, al-Bīrūnī, and Abraham ben Ezra, and has detected both strong and faint echoes of it in places as far apart as Cordova and Bukhara, not to mention Byzantium, Florence, and Magdeburg (Germany). A thorough command of his material, both written records and works of figural art, coupled as it is with a sensitive and deliberate approach to interpretation, enables him to avoid the pitfalls of overgeneralization and unfounded claims—whether regarding al-Bīrūnī’s alleged knowledge of Greek and Dante’s dependence on Islamic sources, or J. Christoph Buergel’s essays (The Feather of Simurgh: The “Licit Magic” of the Arts in Medieval Islam, 1988) on the position of the arts in Islamic civilization, to give just a few examples. Strohmaier’s studies present all those readers not conversant with Russian with an additional benefit, for he has seized the opportunity that historical and biographic circumstances offered him and put his command of Russian to good academic use.

Readers with an interest in medical history will clearly concentrate on the sections on the history of ancient and of Arabic medicine (sections 2 and 6, respectively). Two articles deserve special mention: “Medical Instruction and Training in the Islamic Middle Ages” (pp. 391–96), and “Dura Mater, Pia Mater: The History of Two Anatomical Terms” (pp. 408–23).

Inevitably, a hefty collection of studies such as this one cannot in all its parts appeal to every member of the potential audience; however, there is scarcely a page that does...