Adam Wodeham
Adam Wodeham (d. 1358), Oxford Franciscan protégé of Ockham and influential adherent of Ockham’s philosophical approach in the years of Oxford’s “Golden Age” of theology. Wodeham’s most important philosophical innovation was the “complex significable,” ak
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ʿAbdallat:¯ıf al-Bag˙da¯dı¯ CECILIA MARTINI BONADEO Dipartimento di Filosofia Universita` di Padova Padova Italy
Abstract Between the eighth and ninth centuries, the production of original philosophical and scientific treatises became dominant with respect to the study of Greek philosophical and scientific literature in Arabic translation. This is due to the contribution of the translators and al-Kindı¯’s thought, as well as to the experience of the teachers in the tenth-century Aristotelian circle of Baghdad, mostly al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯. All had the intention to classify the sciences, to return to a literal commentary of the Aristotelian text following the Alexandrine model, and to single out the nature of falsafa and the Greek-Arabic sciences in their relationship with the Qurʾa¯nic sciences – an approach that extends from the end of the eleventh, throughout the twelfth, and up to the beginning of the thirteenth century. It is enough to mention Avicenna to get an idea of this development in the Arabic–Islamic philosophy and medicine of these centuries. The claim has been made that this generated a sort of ‘‘purist’’ reaction (Gutas 1998), best exemplified by Averroes and his program of going back to Aristotle and the Greek tradition. Such a phenomenon took place not only in al-Andalus but also in the East of the Islamic world: Muwaffaq al-Dı¯n Muh: ammad ‘Abd alLat:¯ıf ibn Yu¯suf al-Bag˙da¯dı¯ would be the best representative of this current of thought.
‘Abd al-Lat:¯ıf al-Bag˙da¯dı¯ has been considered a pedantic scholar, whose approach to science and philosophy was scholastic and legalistic rather than experimental and creative. Nevertheless, the labels of ‘‘purist’’ and ‘‘compiler’’ are not suitable for describing the intellectual life of this writer. ‘Abd al-Lat:¯ıf al-Bag˙da¯dı¯ cannot be considered as a supporter of a sort of coming back to Aristotle or Galen sic et simpliciter. True, he claimed in his autobiography the necessity to go back to the Greek sources. Still, the reader must go beyond this claim and try to see what corresponds to it in the historical reality of ‘Abd al-Lat:¯ıf al-Bag˙da¯dı¯’s sources. In doing so, he will realize that ‘Abd al-Lat:¯ıf alBag˙da¯dı¯’s sources are by no means the Greek scientific and philosophical texts in themselves – too far from him – but those produced by the assimilation of the Greek thought in Islamic culture, that have been reworked by ‘Abd alLat:¯ıf al-Bag˙da¯dı¯ not without originality. We possess two coeval biographies of him. The first is embedded in Ibn Abı¯ Us:aybi‘a’s biographical work, the Sources of Information on the Classes of Physicians (‘Uyu¯n al-anba¯’ f ¯ı t:abaqa¯t al-at:ibba¯’). The second is an autobiography, survived in a manuscript of Bursa, and its title is Book of Two Pieces of Advice (Kita¯b al-nas:¯ıh: atayn). Finally, further information on ‘Abd al-Lat:¯ıf al-Bag˙da¯dı¯ can be found in the report of his journey in Egypt entitled Book of the Report and Account of the Things Which I Witnessed and the Events Seen in the Land of Egypt (Kita¯b al-ifa
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