This project is dedicated to the epistolary correspondence between Avicenna and al-Bīrūnī. Its aims are to produce an improved Arabic text, to prepare the first reliable translation into a European language, and to compose a detailed commentary, which will explain the historical and philosophical aspects of the exchange. The project is funded by the DFG.
This project focuses on the letters exchanged by two of the most important figures in the history of philosophy and science in the Islamic world, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and al-Bīrūnī. The correspondence began around 1000 AD, when al-Bīrūnī sent a series of questions to a young but already famous Ibn Sīnā.
These questions were mainly concerned with topics in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Ibn Sīnā wrote answers to them, which led to another round of questions from al-Bīrūnī. Finally, one of Ibn Sīnā's pupils wrote a second batch of answers. Fortunately, all four stages of this correspondence have been preserved in a text which, to this day, has not been adequately translated or analysed.
This is the task of the DFG-funded project, which aims to produce an imrpvoed Arabic text, the first reliable translation of the whole correspondence into a European language as well as a detailed commentary explaining the historical and philosophical aspects of the exchange.