Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī

Jacobite Christian philosopher and logician of Baghdad, student of Abū Bishr Mattā and al-Fārābī and, after al-Fārābī, head of the Baghdad school of logic, who translated and commented on books of the Organon.

Life

Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī was born in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, and was known after it as al-Takrītī and, for his logic, as al-Manṭiqī. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he studied logic and philosophy in Baghdad with Abū Bishr Mattā b. Yūnus and al-Fārābī, and after al-Fārābī’s death became head of the Baghdad school of logic. He translated from Syriac and also earned well by copying Islamic works for the notables of Baghdad. His students included Muslims, among them Abū Sulaymān al-Sijistānī, ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī and Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī, and Christians such as Ibn Zurʿa, Ibn al-Khammār and Ibn al-Samḥ. He died in Baghdad on 20 Dhū al-Qaʿda 364 (1 August 975).

Ibn al-Nadīm called him the star of his age in philosophy, and a modern editor of his works the only authority in logic after al-Fārābī; al-Tawḥīdī, by contrast, belittled his metaphysics. Christian sources stress his defence of Christian doctrine, and the TDV observes that he was a churchman before he was a logician. Of some 120 works described by Gerhard Endress, many are on theology, including defences of the Trinity against al-Kindī and Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq, and his Tahdhīb al-akhlāq on ethics has often been printed.

The TDV article on logic calls him, a Jacobite, one of the best-known logicians after al-Fārābī, and credits him with translations of the Categories, the Analytics, the Topics, the Sophistical Refutations and the Poetics, with studies of his own on them. For him logic is the art that distinguishes truth from falsehood in the theoretical sciences and good from evil in the practical ones, so that its end is ‘complete good’, the key to happiness; like al-Fārābī he treated it as an independent science, one of the three parts of philosophy, not merely an introduction to the others. In the dispute over the merits of Arabic grammar and Greek logic he carried on the position of his teachers Abū Bishr and al-Fārābī, and wrote a treatise on the difference between the art of philosophical logic and Arabic grammar. Tony Street and Nadja Germann likewise note that philosophers of the Baghdad school such as Yaḥyā ‘by and large adopt Alfarabi’s doctrine’ on how logic relates to language. Among his short logical works are questions on Porphyry’s Isagoge and a treatise arguing that the categories are exactly ten.

Works

• Maqāla fī tabyīn al-faṣl bayna ṣināʿatay al-manṭiq al-falsafī wa-l-naḥw al-ʿarabī مَقَالَةٌ فِي تَبْيِينِ الفَصْلِ بَيْنَ صِنَاعَتَيِ المَنْطِقِ الفَلْسَفِيِّ وَالنَّحْوِ العَرَبِيِّOn the difference between philosophical logic and Arabic grammar; ed. in Maqālāt Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, ed. Saḥbān Khalīfāt, pp. 414–424 (TDV).عَمَل
• Maqāla fī l-buḥūth al-arbaʿa al-ʿilmiyya ʿan ṣināʿat al-manṭiqOn the four scientific questions about the art of logic; ed. Mübahat Türker; English tr. Nicholas Rescher and Fadlou Shehadi (1967).عَمَل
• ʿIddat masāʾil fī Kitāb Īsāghūjī عِدَّةُ مَسَائِلَ فِي كِتَابِ إِيسَاغُوجِي — عَلَى فُرْفُورِيُوسQuestions on Porphyry’s Isagoge (TDV).عَمَل
• Maqāla fī anna l-maqūlāt ʿashr lā aqall wa-lā akthar — عَلَى أَرِسْطُوThat the categories are ten, no fewer and no more (TDV).عَمَل
• Arabic translations of books of the Organon — عَلَى أَرِسْطُوThe TDV article on logic names the Categories, Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations and Poetics.تَرْجَمَة
• Tahdhīb al-akhlāq تَهْذِيبُ الأَخْلَاقِTreatise on ethics, his best-known work, printed many times since 1866.عَمَل

Reception

The TDV rejects the claim of some Syriac scholars that the idea of the Necessary Existent passed from him to the Muslim philosophers: in theology he avoided calling God the Necessary Existent, preferring ‘cause of causes’ and ‘creator’.

This site’s articles on the translations count him among the translators of the Baghdad school named by the TDV.