The classic Arabic bibliographies ascribe to al-Fārābī a treatise entitled Fī māhiyyat al-nafs (“On the Essence of the Soul”), of which no Arabic manuscript is known to exist. There is however a Hebrew text, translated from the Arabic by Zeraḥiah ben She'altiel Ḥen of Rome in 1284, which is ascribed to al-Fārābī in all the manuscripts and which carries the title Ma'amar be-mahut ha-nefesh (“Treatise on the Essence of the Soul”). Since Steinschneider, this text is taken to be the translation of al-Fārābī's treatise lost in the original. In this paper I argue that the Ma'amar be-mahut ha-nefesh is not by al-Fārābī: it is in vain that one looks in it for ideas characteristic to the Second Master, while the ideas expressed therein are incompatible with those of al-Fārābī. I offer a study of Ma'amar be-mahut ha-nefesh, followed by an annotated translation into French. This is a “popular” Neoplatonic text, whose ideas are mostly very ordinary, but in part uncommon. It notably explains the emergence of forms in matter by positing the existence of a pneuma that by circulating around the body “brings forth” the vegetative and animal souls. The author also draws on an unusual notion called hemshel in Hebrew (a term probably translating the Arabic mithāl, rendered as exemplum in Latin): the exemplum is said to become visible as a result of the pneuma's circular motion. The paper is followed by a short Note by Rémi Brague looking into the sources of the treatise. Brague concludes that the text cannot be assigned to any specific tradition.

Il est bien difficile de situer notre traité dans le temps et l'espace, ou même de le rattacher à une école déterminée. Aucune allusion ne permet de se faire une idée de l'appartenance religieuse de son auteur. Bénédiction initiale et eulogie finale sont des rites obligé (§ 60). La référence au “Créateur béni soit-il” (§17) ou à la sagesse divine (§ 31) est présente chez tout le monde. Aucun penseur n'est cité par son nom propre.

This paper sets out to chart the fortunes of one of the most significant moral propositions in Mu'tazilite moral theory — namely, that it is evil to lie, and it is evil irrespective of the consequences of so doing. The reasons which promote this principle to significance relate to the broader context of Mu'tazilite theological orientation, which aims to vindicate God's justice through demonstrating that moral value does not derive from revelation. Yet this principle suffers the difficulties which commonly afflict deontological precepts, particularly the challenges posed by their conflict with teleological moral demands in certain situations, as well as the difficulty of empirically ascertaining that a moral principle has in fact given the agent his reason for action, as the Mu'tazilites attempt to do. These were difficulties which Aš'arite critics of Mu'tazilite moral claims were quick to pick up on, and it is in the light of such hostile fire that the coherence of the Mu'tazilite position on the evilness of lies is examined. This is the principal focus of this essay, and it is complemented by an examination of how the principle carries over to the realm of divine morality: can God tell a lie? If not, why not? And what does this reveal about the ordering of moral values in Mu'tazilite thought?

It has long been considered that Arabic algebra scarcely left any traces in mathematical literature of Hebrew expression. Thanks to the unpublished sources we have discovered, and to an attentive examination of already-known texts, one can no longer subscribe to such a judgement. The evidence we examine in this first article sheds light on the circulation, in erudite Jewish circles, of Arabic algebraic knowledge in Spain, Italy, Provence, and Sicily, between the 12th and the 14th centuries. The Epistle on number by the Castillian astronomer Isaac ben Salomon al-Aḥdab was written in Sicily at the end of the 14th century, and based on the Talkhīṣ a'māl al-ḥisāb of Ibn al-Bannā' (1256-1321). That part of the Epistle that is devoted to algebra follows the tradition of al-Karajī. It offers, for the first time in Hebrew, a rational presentation of arithmetical operations extended to algebraic expressions.

John Walbridge, The Leaven of the Ancients. Suhrawardī and the Heritage of the Greeks (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2000), xviii + 305 pp.

R. Rashed, Les mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe au XIe siècles, vol. IV: Méthodes géométriques, transformations ponctuelles et philosophie des mathématiques, London, al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2002, XIII-1064-VII p.