Sixth-century scholar at the Sasanian court whose treatise on Aristotle’s logic, addressed to Khusraw I Anūshirwān, brought the Alexandrian introduction to philosophy and logic into the Persian world; Miskawayh quotes him, and his division of philosophy influenced the early Islamic philosophers.
Life
Little is certain about Paul’s life, and the sources may concern more than one man of that name. The Syriac Orthodox historian Bar Hebraeus places him under the East Syriac patriarch Ezekiel (567–580) and reports that he aspired to become metropolitan bishop of Persis and later converted to Zoroastrianism; the historical value of this report has been questioned. The Paul who is said to have debated with a Manichaean named Photinus at Constantinople in 527 is probably not the author of the logical works, who flourished more than forty years later.
His main surviving work is a treatise on logic addressed to the Persian king Khusraw I Anūshirwān (r. 531–579), preserved in Syriac in a British Museum manuscript and edited by Land in 1875. It contains a general introduction to philosophy, an introduction to logic based on Porphyry’s Isagoge, and summaries of the books of Aristotle’s Organon; whether it was first written in Middle Persian is an open question. A short Syriac commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation, whose heading says that Severus Sebokht (d. 667) translated it from Middle Persian, is also attributed to him. In these works Paul classifies the parts of philosophy and argues that knowledge is superior to faith.
Paul belongs to the earliest phase of logic in the Persian and then Islamic world. The Stanford Encyclopedia describes the logic texts of Paul the Persian and of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ as ‘heirs of the Alexandrian view’, which copied Aristotle’s proofs that certain premise pairs yield no conclusion ‘with total formal rigor’. According to Byard Bennett in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, Miskawayh (d. 1030) quotes an otherwise unknown work of Paul addressed to Khusraw in his Tartīb al-saʿādāt, and Paul’s classification of philosophy and his claim for the superiority of knowledge over faith influenced Islamic philosophers of the ninth to eleventh centuries.
Uncertain or disputed
- Dates and identity: the logical works date from the reign of Khusraw I (531–579); Bar Hebraeus’ placing under the patriarch Ezekiel (567–580) and his account of Paul’s conversion are of uncertain value (Iranica, citing Teixidor). No date of death is known.
- Original language: whether the treatise to Khusraw was first written in Middle Persian is open; the relation between the On Interpretation commentary and the treatise’s summary of that book is not established (Iranica).
- Wikipedia, citing Dimitri Gutas, states that his introduction was translated into Arabic by Abū Bishr Mattā; this is not mentioned in the Encyclopaedia Iranica article and was not checked further.
- No Arabic form of his name is given here, since none was found in the sources consulted for this page.
Works
- Treatise on Aristotle’s logic, addressed to Khusraw I — بر ارسطوSyriac; British Museum ms. 988, ed. Land (1875). Introduction to philosophy, introduction to logic after Porphyry’s Isagoge, and summaries of the Organon.تصنیف
- Commentary on On Interpretation — بر ارسطوShort Syriac commentary (Alqosh, ms. Vosté 53), said to have been translated from Middle Persian by Severus Sebokht.شرح
Reception
Bar Hebraeus calls one of his works ‘an admirable introduction to the dialectics’ of Aristotle, generally identified with the treatise to Khusraw I (Iranica).
Sources (3)