Arabic Beyond the Arabs
Ibn Gabirol
ابن جَبِيرول
Abu Ayyub Sulayman ibn Yahya ibn Gabirol (d. c. 1058), a Jew of Málaga and Zaragoza, wrote his philosophical book «The Source of Life» in Arabic. The Arabic original is lost; its Latin translation, Fons Vitae, survives. Europe's philosophers read it for centuries as the work of «Avicebron», some taking him for a Muslim and some for a Christian, until Salomon Munk showed in 1846 that he was Ibn Gabirol.
- In brief
- An Arabic book whose original was lost, and which lived for centuries in Latin under a borrowed name
- Outside Arabic
- Fons Vitae · Avicebron
«فكتابه في الفلسفة المعنون بـ"عين الحياة" محرّرٌ بالعربيّة… وصلةُ فكر ابن جبرون [كذا] بالعرب واضحةٌ كلّ الوضوح حتّى في أقصر مؤلّفاته التي حرّرها كلَّها بالعربيّة.»
Ibn Gabirol himself reproached the Jews of Zaragoza because some spoke Romance and some Arabic, and none knew Hebrew well. The print garbles his name. The Latin translation, the name Avicebron and Munk's discovery are not in the lecture; they are well known.
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Sources
- هنري بيريس، مجلّة المجمع العلميّ العربيّ ١٩/٩ (١٩٤٤م)، ص٤٠٣
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Solomon Ibn Gabirol [Avicebron]
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