This study, limited to Kitāb Taḥṣīl al-sa'āda, examines two points: the first point concerns the place of political science in the hierarchy of the sciences and its dependence on Metaphysics. This dependence gives it a theoretical status and a proper subject, namely voluntary intelligibles which appear as objective entities and stable essences. The second point to be examined concerns these intelligibles, considered in their relationship to deliberation. From this viewpoint, they appear as formal invariants open to different formulations which correspond to different modes of existence. These formulations are also formal rules to the realisation of intelligibles, and though they are more or less general, they are not universal. They are objects for deliberative discovery and the model of deliberative operations seems similar to the model of ingeniosity present in Algebra and the arts of ingenious devices.

The author investigates the different readings of Ibn ṬufayPs epistle, Ḥayy b. Yaqẓan. Following a suggestion by L. Gauthier, who simply asked that the epistle should be read as a whole, the author adds Ṣalāḥ ‘Abd al- ḥabūr's reworking of the tale as a children's story to L. Gauthier's list of partial readings. The author juxtaposes Ṣalāḥ ‘Abd al- ḥabūr's reading, which does justice only to what Asāl taught Ḥayy, to G. Hourani's reading, which succeeds in reflecting only what Ḥayy taught Asāl. This impasse in the readings of Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān reveals what is missing, namely an understanding of the tale which fundamentally conforms to several of Alfarabi's teachings, though not to L. Gauthier's interpretation.

The aim of this paper is to identify the position the ru'yat Allāh holds within the curriculum of sciences described by the Iḫwān al-Ṣafa'. Their concept of knowledge is first clarified. The Ihwan use the terminology of rational knowledge to describe items of faith too. But faith is only an introduction to a greater knowledge. Now: is the supreme knowledge to be considered as speculative and theoretical, or are the ḫawciṣṣ, the only ones entitled to the vision of God, eventually obliged to rely on a kind of divine “revelation” or “inspiration”? If the “vision of God” appears beyond any possible connotation of knowledge in “rational” terms, it is unclear, however, whether the Ihwan use the concepts of “revelation” and “inspiration” as a way of explaining in a theological terminology the utmost degree of human knowledge (perhaps according to the same analogical function waḥy and ilhām appear to have in Ibn Sīnā). Moreover, the qualities and moral dispositions attributed to the “Friends of God” remind us of Sufi doctrines. Consequently, the question of the relation between Sufism and imāmite theories could be re-opened: the Iḫwānian definition of the “science of the transcendent” shows that the gnoseological itinerary is not concluded even with the “vision of God.”

The Aristotelian theme of the identity of the intellect and of the intelligibleis of the utmost importance in Averroes' noetics. This latter, studied in the Latin translations that the Latin philosophers of the thirteenth century scrutinized, rigourously develop this theme so as to preserve the supraempirical and transcendant character of necessary truth that human thinking identifies, thereto sacrificing the individual uniqueness of the intellective operation in its final instance. A Latin Master of the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas, adopts Averroes' insight into the transcendence of the noetic, and confirms it, even as he defends the strictly personal character of human intellection.

Ibn al-Bannā' of Marrakesh (1256–1321) is the author of one of the four extant “editions” of the unfinished zīj of Ibn Isḥāq (fl. Tunis and Marrakesh ca. 1193–1222): it contains a selection of his tables accompanied by a collection of canons, easy to understand, which makes the zīj accessible for the computation of planetary longitudes. The present paper studies some modifications of the structure of the tables the purpose of which is to make calculations easier. The tables of the planetary and lunar equations of the centre are “displaced." The tables of the equation of the anomaly of Mars, Venus and Mercury, are standard, while, in the cases of Jupiter and Saturn, the equation of the anomaly is calculated in the same way as that for the Moon. Ibn al-Bannā' appears as a clever adapter, who displays a clear ingenuity allowing him to introduce formal modifications which give his work an appearance of novelty which does not correspond to reality.