al-Fārābī, Latin Translations of

Abstract

Some of al-Fārābī’s philosophical works were translated into Latin during the Middle Ages. Two of them were translated literally from Arabic by Gerard of Cremona around 1175: the Enumeration of the Sciences, and a summary of books V–VIII of Aristotle’s Physics. Other Farabian works were translated into Latin in a less literal way: the Enumeration of the Sciences was “re-written” by Dominicus Gundissalinus in his De scientiis (c. 1154–1166). There are Latin translations, probably by Gundissalinus, also of the treatise On the Intellect, of the Book of Exhortation to the Way of Happiness, as well as of part of The Sources of Questions; the introduction and the beginning of the Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric was translated by Hermann the German, in 1243–1244. Al-Fārābī’s Summaries and Long Commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon, as well as his Commentaries on the Physics and the Nicomachean Ethics, might have been translated into Latin, since they are apparently one of the sources of Albert the Great. Moreover, some short works ascribed to al-Fārābī were translated into Latin, but their Farabian authorship is not sure.