It is well-known that the Arab philosophers of the Aristotelian tradition, like some of their Alexandrian predecessors, attached rhetoric and poetics to logic, and supported this inclusion by the idea that the principal poetic procedure - that is, essentially, metaphor - is a kind of syllogism: the poetic syllogism. However, until now, no texts prior to those of Avicenna had been identified which render the structure of this syllogism explicit. In the present contribution, we present and translate a passage from al-Fārābī which shows that for him, the poetic syllogism is an incorrect syllogism of the second figure - a different interpretation from that which will be given by Avicenna.

The influence of Greek sources on the Arab philosophers is both obvious and important. What is less clear is how the quality of the translations from which the philosophers worked affected their understanding of the points that the Greek writers were making. This article investigates one small but self-contained topic from within the field of translation literature, covering the translations of poetic quotations in the Rhetoric of Aristotle in its Arabic translation, together with an analysis of the types of mistakes to be found there. In itself this is of no more than curiosity value, but an application of the lessons to be learnt here to a linguistic study of Arabic philosophical commentaries, and, by extension, to philosophical theory, will be of clear importance.

The thesis presented in the present article is not the widely-accepted one according to which Mu‘tazilite thought indirectly influenced the birth and development of Arab rhetoric (balāġa ) as an intellectual trend at the time that witnessed the constitution of this discipline of Arab language sciences, but the more specific thesis that it was primarily in Mu‘tazilite thought that the foundations of balāġa as a technical discipline were truly elaborated. To argue this thesis, we shall proceed in two stages. In the first, we shall try to identify the indirect Mu‘tazilite sources of balāġa; that is, the theses and overall positions of this movement, an echo of which may be found in constitutive elements of the discipline. In the second, we will try to identify some of the direct Mu‘tazilite sources of balāġa on the basis of Mu‘tazilite studies directly devoted to the status of the Koranic text, and the concepts elaborated to account for it.

Metaphor was based on similarity. During their history the Arabs adopted different logical systems in their scientific investigations. They shifted from Aristotle's logic accepted by the philosophers to that of the theologians and jurisconsults, and later again back to Aristotle's logic. In all these logical systems the definition of metaphor was dependent on the ever changing meaning of “similarity”. The seemingly unchanging definition of metaphor implies different interpretations in different ages parallel to the changing logical background.

The article deals with the Arabic sources of Chr. Clavius in Rome and the six different ways they were used by him in mathematics and astronomy. It inquires especially into his attitude towards al-Farghānī, Thābit ibn Qurra, al-Bi[tdotu]rūjī, Ibn Rushd, Mu[hdotu]ammad al-Baghdādī, Pseudo-Ibn al-Haytham, Jābir ibn Afla[hdotu], and Pseudo-al-[Tuotu]ūsī.

R. Rashed, Géométrie et dioptrique au Xesiècle, Ibn Sahl, al-Qūhī et Ibn al-Haytham (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1993); OEuvres philosophiques et scientifiques d'al Kindī, vol. I: L'Optique et la catoptrique (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1997); Les Catoptriciens grecs (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2000).