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This paper introduces two newly discovered epistles by the celebrated physician and philosopher Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' al-Razi (Rhazes, d. ca. 925). The first epistle addresses the question of [...]

Some scholars have tried to distinguish between historical fact and legend in the biographical information about al-Farabi that can be gleaned from medieval Arabic sources; by reinterpreting accounts in the bio-bibliographical literature and by presenting new evidence from a contemporaneous medical source, this article argues that such a distinction is problematic. In the eyes of some of his contemporaries, al-Farabi exemplified the character type of the melancholic thinker, who succumbs to the disease because of excessive study. Arguing that the poetry attributed to al-Farabi fits well with the picture that the new medical source paints of him, the article also underscores that the topics of literature are the topics of life, and that it is therefore doubtful whether we will ever be able to disentangle myth from reality in the biographical information about al-Farabi., In his masterly article on al-Farabi's biography, Dimitri Gutas rightly remarks that '[t]he sources for the life of Farabi are such as to make the reconstruction of his biography beyond [...]

Aristotle Poetics: Editio Maior of the Greek Text with Historiai Introductions and Philological Commentaries. Edited by LEONARDO TARAN and DIMITRI GUTAS. Mnemosyne Supplements, vol. 338. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xiii [...]