A Persian Origin of the Arabic Aristotle? The Debate on the Circumstantial Evidence of the Manteq Revisited

The oldest Arabic translation of any Greek text is an eighth-century paraphrase of the first half of Aristotle’sOrganon, known as theManteq. This text has been ascribed to Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, the Persian administrator, author, and translator. Although the source text of theManteqhas not survived, the ascription to Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ—who knew neither Greek nor Syriac—implies that it was written in Middle Persian. Modern scholars have often called the ascription to Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ into question. This article reassesses that debate and demonstrates that it has been motivated by scholarly skepticism towards the late antique Persian intellectual tradition as a conduit of Aristotelianism. Furthermore, this article argues that none of the available circumstantial evidence contradicts an Aristotelian tradition in Persian, but rather supports it.