Islamic philosophical manuscripts

Abstract

It was the translation movement in Islamic civilization which made the works of Greek scholars available to the Muslims.[i] But not only did translators put the various works of Aristotle, Plato, Galen, and other philosophers into Arabic; the works of the Greek philosophers were also classified and catalogued, in which context mention should be made of two works by Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, in one of which he presented the works of Plato, and in the other the works of Aristotle.[ii] Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq in his letter to ʿAli b. Yaḥyā mentioned individually 129 books that his co-workers had translated with him, and he gives a detailed description of how he obtained the manuscripts and how he compared the manuscripts with each other in order to arrive at correct and complete texts.