From Antony of Tagrit to the Arabic Version
The Syriac Technical Vocabulary of Rhetoric and the Migration of Words
Mara
Nicosia
University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’
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James E. Walters
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2020
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv23n1nicosia
Mara Nicosia
From Antony of Tagrit to the Arabic Version: The Syriac Technical Vocabulary of Rhetoric and the Migration of Words
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol23/HV23N1Nicosia.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2020
vol 23
issue 1
pp 61–97
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal
dedicated to the study of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in
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Antony of Tagrit
Aristotle
Rhetoric Cross
Arabic
Translation
File created by James E. Walters
Abstract
Rhetoric was part of the borrowed Greek
educational system of the Enkyklios paideia, together with
logic and grammar. However, the technical terminology had to be adapted, so the
question is which strategies were used to create the vocabulary of Syriac rhetoric.
This paper aims at analyzing some meaningful loanwords, adaptations, calques and
native words used to build this specialized lexis. A manuscript containing the
Syriac version of Aristotle’s Rhetoric was never found, and
we need to rely upon other texts that dealt with this topic: Antony of Taġrit’s Books of Rhetoric, a part of Bar Šakko’s Book of dialogues and a part of Bar Hebraeus’s Cream of
wisdom. If we wish to have a deeper appreciation of this vocabulary,
however, we need to take into account the Arabic version of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, since it displays some interesting peculiarities
that can help us in the reconstructive process of what the Syriac version might have
looked like. A very useful tool would be the compilation of a database comparing the
Syriac lexis found in the abovementioned texts with the ones used in the Greek and
Arabic versions of Aristotle’s book: actually, this method already highlighted some
surprising phenomena that will be presented in this paper, in order to show how
trilingual comparison can be an important tool to shed some light on the translation
movement of both texts and cultural patterns that started in Late Antiquity.* The content of this paper was discussed at the Oriental Institute in
Oxford, during the 48th ARAM International
Conference on Syriac Christianity, 11-13th July 2018. I wish to express my deepest thanks to Professor
John Watt for his invaluable support and his enlightening remarks,
Professor Lucas Van Rompay for his precious insights and comments, and
Aaron Butts for his suggestions and advice.
The path that brought Aristotelian rhetoric towards the Arabic milieu is a long and
complicated one, though it has occasionally been conceived as straightforward, from
Greek to Arabic, diminishing the role played by the Syriac world. To weaken the
position of Syriac in this field there is the fact that no manuscript containing the
Syriac version of Aristotle’s Techne Rhetorike has been found
so far. At the present time, then, the first work dealing with rhetoric in Syriac
belongs to, apparently, the 9th century and this absence
of relevant works on the topic composed during the so-called ‘classical period’
unfortunately led some scholars to the wrong impression that the Syriac world was
somehow unaware of Aristotelian rhetoric until late, and that a translation of this
work was never produced.
This paper aims at showing that, despite the late date of the Syriac works, they can
probably be considered the products of a tradition of interpretation of Aristotle’s
books and also the result of a lively discussion on the topic. This interest in
Aristotelian sciences, and specifically Rhetoric, is
testified, for instance, by the letter written by Patriarch Timothy I to Mar
Pethion, in which he asks his delegate to find out whether the monastery of Mar
Mattai possesses commentaries or scholia in Syriac (or other languages) on Poetics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations
and Rhetoric.S.P. Brock,
“Two letters of the patriarch Timothy from the late eighth century on
translations from Greek”, Arabic sciences and
philosophy 9 (1999), 236), J.W. Watt, “Greek philosophy and Syriac
culture in ʿAbbasid Iraq”, in Christian heritage of Iraq.
Collected papers from the Christianity of Iraq, Gorgias Eastern
Christian Studies 13, ed. E.C.D. Hunter (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press,
2009), 14 and V. Berti, Vita e studi di Timoteo I
patriarca cristiano di Baghdad. Ricerche sull’epistolario e sulle fonti
contigue, Studia Iranica 41, Chrétiens en terre d’Iran 3
(Paris: Association pour l’avancement des etudes Iraniennes, 2009),
323.
Syriac Works on Rhetoric
Concerning the Syriac contributions to rhetorical studies, the most important –
and yet still little known – one is the work of Antony of Taġrit: the author
composed what looks like a handbook designed for students of rhetoric, divided
into five volumes, that explains in details various aspects of the ‘art of
speaking’.
J.W. Watt, “Guarding the Syriac language in an Arabic environment:
Antony of Tagrit on the use of grammar in rhetoric”, in Syriac polemics. Studies in honour of Gerrit Jan
Reinink, Orientalia Lavaniensia Analecta 170, eds. W.J. van
Bekkum, et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 136. Moreover, as J.W. Watt,
“Rhetorical education and Florilegia in Syriac”, in Les auteurs syriaques et leur langue, Études Syriaques 15, ed.
M. Farina (Paris: Geuthner 2018), 96, ft. 2, recently remarked, it would
be more appropriate to say that Antony composed two treatises on
rhetoric, a longer one in four books called ‘On the science of
Rhetoric’, and a shorter one, that coincides with what is normally
accounted as The fifth book of Rhetoric, called
‘On the ornamentation and decoration of words’. Regardless, since the
five books division is widespread and accepted, this paper, as Watt’s,
will use the conventional reference for the sake of commodity.
The books are based on Aristotelian material but also display
some important differences that show influences of other Greek philosophers like
Plato. On the
points of contact between Antony and the Greek philosophers see J.W.
Watt, “The Syriac reception of Platonic and Aristotelian rhetoric”, ARAM 5 (1993), J.W. Watt, “Eastward and westward
transmission of classical rhetoric, in Centres of
learning and location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East,
eds. J.W Drijvers and A.A. MacDonald (Leiden: Brill, 1995), J.W. Watt,
“Greek philosophy”, 21-24, and J.W. Watt “Literary and philosophical
rhetoric in Syriac”, in Literary and philosophical
rhetoric in the Greek, Roman, Syriac and Arabic worlds,
Europaea Memoria. Studien und Texte zur Geschichte der europäische Ideen
66, ed. F. Woerther (Hildesheim: Olms 2009), 147-150.
Antony’s efforts also served as a starting point for portions of at least two
other works, namely Bar Šakko’s Book of dialogues The first part of
this book deals with grammar, rhetoric and poetics. The rhetorical part
is based on section one and five of Antony of Taġrit’s treatises. J.
Bendrat (1968). “Der Dialog über die Rhetorik des Jacob bar Shakko“, in
Paul de Lagarde und die syrischen
Kirchengeschichte, ed. Göttingen Arbeitskreis für syrischen
Kirchengeschichte (Göttingen: Lagarde-Haus, 1968). and Bar
Hebraeus’s Cream of wisdom. The credit for finding out
that a summary of Antony’s works was hidden behind a certain part of Bar Šakko’s
Dialogues belongs to Martin Sprengling M. Sprengling, “Antonius Rhetor on
versification with an introduction and two appendices”, The American Journal of Semitic Languages and
Literatures 32: 3(1916), and “Severus Bar Shakko’s Poetics, Part II”, The
American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 32: 4
(1916). and Rubens Duval at the beginning of last
century, R.
Duval, “Notice sur la Rhétorique d’Antoine de Tagrit”, in Orientalische Studien Theodor Nöldeke zum siebzigsten
Geburtstag., ed. C. Bezold (Gießen: Verlag von Alfred
Töpelmann). while for the printed version of this part one
can rely upon abbé Martin’s edition. J.P.P. Martin, De la
métrique chez les Syriens (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1878).
John Watt completed an edition, translation, commentary
and provisional glossary of the rhetorical part of the afore-mentioned Cream of wisdom. J.W. Watt, Aristotelian rhetoric
in Syriac: Barhebraeus, Butyrum sapientiae, Book of Rhetoric,
Aristoteles Semitico-Latinus 18 (Leiden-Boston: Brill,
2005).
When we talk about Antony of Taġrit’s works, some preliminary remarks are due.
The main remark concerns the scholarly debate about dating Antony’s life, since
the only concrete reference belongs to Bar Hebraeus’s Ecclesiastical history, where it is said that Antony lived at the time
of Patriarch Dionysius of Tell Maḥre, See J.W. Watt, “Antony of Tagrit as a student of
Syriac poetry”, Le Muséon 98: 3-4 (1985), 263 and
J.W. Watt, The fifth book of the Rhetoric of Antony of
Tagrit, CSCO 481, trans. (Louvain: Peeters, 1986), V-VII, for
further references. a remark that was embraced by Ignatius
Barsoum. I.A. Barsoum,
The scattered pearls: a history of Syriac
literature and sciences (translated by Matti Moosa)
(Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2003), 27 and 383-386, and I.A.
Barsoum, Geschichte der syrischen
Wissenschaften und Literatur (aus dem Arabischen von G. Toro und A.
Gorgis), Eichstätter Beiträge zum Christlichen Orient 2,
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012) 19 and 298-300. See also J.W. Watt,
“Anṭun of Tagrit”, in Gorgias Encyclopedic
Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, eds. S.P. Brock et al.
(Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2011), 23. However,
there appears to be no concrete evidence to prove or reject this date, except
for what Sebastian Brock and Lucas Van Rompay found inside the Deir al-Surian
collection:
S.P. Brock and L. Van Rompay, Catalogue of the Syriac
manuscripts and fragments in the library of Deir al-Surian, Wadi
al-Natrun (Egypt), Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 227
(Leuven-Paris-Walpole, MA: Uitgeverij Peeters en Department Oosterse
Studies, 2014), 244. a portion of a manuscript (Ms. Deir
al-Surian, Syr. 32) containing Antony’s works, that turned out to be the lost
part of the British Library manuscript Add. 17208. The two scholars have
interpreted the handwriting as belonging to the 9th
century, confirming the idea previously put forward by William Wright about the
date of the BL portion. W.
Wight, Catalogue of Syriac manuscript in the
British Museum, Vol. II (London: Gilbert and Rivington
Printers, 1871), 613.
Concerning Antony’s treatises on Rhetoric, which are
complex and still not entirely studied, the translation and edition of the fifth
book has been provided by Watt, J.W. Watt, The fifth book of the
Rhetoric of Antony of Tagrit, CSCO 480-1, edition and
translation, (Louvain: Peeters, 1986). who complemented it
with a conspicuous number of articles dealing with the topic of Syriac rhetoric
in general. Pauline Eskenasy, on the other hand, chose the first book as the
subject of her PhD thesis, which unfortunately was never published, and made a
provisional translation and commentary, followed by a reproduction of the
Harvard manuscript that she used for her study. P.E. Eskenasy, Antony of Tagrit’s
Rhetoric Book One: Introduction, partial translation and
commentary, Unpublished PhD thesis (Harvard University,
1991). Sadly, the other books never experienced a
translation or a proper critical edition, having also suffered from the
complicated history of their manuscripts’ transmission and the poor state of
conservation of some of their parts. For a detailed account on the manuscripts’
transmission see J.W. Watt, “Antony of Tagrit as a student”, 264-266,
J.W. Watt, The fifth book, edition, XI-XXV and A.
Corcella, “Due citazioni dalle Etiopiche di
Eliodoro nella Retorica di Antonio di Tagrīt”,
Orientalia Christiana Periodica 74:2 (2008),
390-391. An attempt has been made by Eliya Sewan d-Bet
Qermez, who published the complete set of Antony’s books: E. Sewan d-Bet Qermez, ܟܬܒܐ ܥܠ ܐܘܡܢܘܬܐ ܕܪܗܛܪܘܬܐ ܣܝܡ ܠܐܢܛܘܢ ܪܝܛܘܪ ܬܓܪܝܬܝܐ.
The Book of the Rhetoric by Antony Rhitor of
Tagrit (Stockholm: Författeres Bokmaskin, 2000).
the author used as his sources a copy, created in 1947, of
the Jerusalem manuscript MS 230 Jerusalem, St Mark’s Monastery MS 230, fully
digitalized, HMML project number SMMJ 00230. F.Y. Dōlabānī, Catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in St Mark’s monastery
(Dairo d-Mor Markos) (Damascus: Sidawi
Printing House, 1994), 485. collated with another
manuscript written by Asmar al-Khoury of ʿAinwardo (and, for the fifth book,
with Watt’s edition). A. Corcella, “Due citazioni”, 394. The
work is by no means a critical edition, but it still represents the only extant
printed sample of the whole set of treatises. I am most grateful to Professor Aldo
Corcella, who provided me with a reproduction of this work, otherwise
impossible to find, in a very short time.
A problem posed by Antony’s texts and their relationship with Aristotle’s works
is that the Syriac author never mentions the Greek philosopher by name. We can
also assume, considering, for instance, the conceptual differences in Antony’s
understanding of Aristotelian categories compared to the Greek “archetype”, that
Antony might have owned a different version of Techné
Rhetoriké, which has not been transmitted to us. For some editions of the Greek text see M.
Dufour, Aristote Rhétorique. Tome
premier (Paris: Société d’édition
« Les Belles Lettres », 1932), M. Dufour, Aristote Rhétorique. Tome deuxième (Paris:
Société d’édition « Les Belles Lettres »,
1938), M. Dufour and A. Wartelle, Aristote Rhétorique. Tome troisième (Paris: Société
d’édition « Les Belles Lettres »,
1973) and R. Kassel, Aristotelis Ars
Rhetorica (Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 1976). For a
lexicon see A. Wartelle, Lexique de la
«Rhétorique» d’Aristote (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1982).
As Watt phrased it:
If Antony learned his theory directly from a Greek handbook, it must have
been very different from any manual known to us, or he must have treated it
with considerable freedom. Since in philosophy Syriac has preserved versions
of late antique compilations of which the originals have been lost, it is by
no means impossible that behind Antony’s treatise lies some lost Greek
rhetorical Art. But the curious mixture of the
familiar and the strange which this work presents to us makes it possible to
suppose that in the Syro-Mesopotamian area there was a tradition of
rhetorical teaching which had developed in its own particular way. J.W. Watt,
“Syriac rhetorical theory and the Syriac tradition of Aristotle’s
Rhetoric”, in Peripatetic Rhetoric after Aristotle, Rutgers University
Studies in Classical Humanities 6, eds. W.W. Fortenbaugh et al. (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 253-254.
It is also necessary to establish whether or not Antony was able to read Greek,
and to what extent. However, the scanty information on Antony that we have at
our disposal makes it hard to answer this question with certainty. Moreover, as
Aaron Butts highlighted, A.M. Butts, “The Graeco-Roman context of the
Syriac language”, in Les auteurs syriaques et leur
langue, Études Syriaques 15, ed. M. Farina (Paris: Geuthner,
2018), 141-142. the use of loanwords by a writer tells
nothing about whether or not he was exposed to the second language, since it
only testifies that the language in use, in this case Syriac, had contacts, at a
certain moment, with another language, that provided it with the loanwords.
The reading of Antony’s treatises may represent an additional resource for
determining the period he lived in, specifically with regard to his prose and
the language he uses. The impression one gets is that of a quite late Syriac,
clearly not in its early classical stage: the texts display, for instance,
plenty of finite verbs instead of the abundance of participles characterizing
Late Aramaic style. On the syntax of participles in classical Syriac
see Th. Nöldeke, Compendious Syriac grammar
(translated by J.A. Crichton) (London: Williams and Norgate,
1904), 211-221. His use of the first person singular
(alternated sometimes with the plural) is another interesting feature, probably
to be explained in the light of the ultimate aim of his work, which was intended
as a hard copy for students. This idea is also supported by the richness of
examples that the author provides, which would not have been necessary if we
were to exclude a didactic aim: this abundance ultimately makes the work not
easy to read. In the light of all this, Antony’s prose often appears heavy and
repetitive, but testifies to a certain knowledge of the works of his
forerunners, that are frequently quoted. The Greek works quoted were probably taken
from a Syriac translation rather than from the Greek originals. See,
among others, J.W. Watt, “Literary and philosophical rhetoric”, 144, and
M. Farina, “Rhétorique en syriaque”, in Encyclopédie
de l’humanisme méditerranéen, ed. H. Touati (Online, available
at http://encyclopedie-humanisme.com/ ?Rhetorique-en-syriaque
[accessed: 28 September 2018], 2015). Barsoum, on the other
hand, had a different opinion, accounting Antony’s style as ‘grand and
eloquent’, and reporting that he also studied Greek. However, he did not provide
evidence to sustain these statements and he did not state the basis on which
they rest. I.E.
Barsoum, The scattered pearls, 383-384, and I.E.
Barsoum, Geschichte , 298-299.
The Arabic Version
As previously stated, Antony’s books are based, to a certain extent, on
Aristotelian material, even though it was probably not written in Greek:
actually, Antony might also have relied upon a Syriac translation of Aristotle’s
Rhetoric, Watt (personal communication) disagrees with this
statement, accounting instead Antony’s works and the Syriac translation
as parallel and independent, both influenced by an earlier Syriac
rhetorical tradition. as did the author of the only extant
Arabic version. Actually, this Arabic translation is preserved in a single
manuscript, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Ms. Arabe
2346 in Paris, This
important manuscript also contains the other treatises comprising
the Alexandrian Organon: Porphyry’s
Isagoge, Categories, De
Interpretatione,
Prior Analytics,
Posterior Analytics,
Sophistical Refutations, Topics and Poetics. For a complete analysis of the manuscript see H.
Hugonnard-Roche, “Remarques sur la tradition arabe de l’Organon
d’après le manuscrit Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Ar. 2364”, in
Glosses and commentaries on Aristotelian
logical texts: the Syriac, Arabic and medieval Latin
traditions, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts 23, ed. Ch.
Burnett, (London: Warburg Institute, 1993), 19-28.
and displays some glosses in which the author explains that the work is based on
two other Arabic manuscripts and a Syriac version. See M.C. Lyons, Aristotle’s Ars Rhetorica: the Arabic version. A new edition with Commentary and Glossary
(Cambridge: Pembroke Arabic Text, 1982), II-III, E. Panoussi, “The
unique Arabic manuscript of Aristotle’s Ars
Rhetorica and its two editions published to date by
ʽAbdurraḥmān Badawī and by M[alcom] C. Lyons”, in Consciousness and Reality: Studies in Memory of
Toshihiko Izutsu, Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science.
Texts and Studies 38, eds. S.J.ad-D. Āshtiyānī et al.
(Leiden-Boston: Brill 2000), 236-238), and U. Vagelpohl, Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the East: the Syriac and
Arabic translation and commentary tradition, Philosophy,
Theology and Science. Texts and Studies 76, (Leiden – Boston: Brill,
2008), 59. The production of this text must have
required a certain ‘critical’ method, given that the author claims to have had
at hand a good Arabic copy and a poorer (but still valuable) other Arabic one,
while, whenever the two were not sufficient to him, he turned to a Syriac copy,
apparently considered the soundest by him. U. Vagelpohl, Aristotle’s
Rhetoric, 51-61, expresses some doubts about the existence of a
Syriac version, saying only that ‘it is not unlikely that the Rhetoric and Poetics were
at some point translated into Syriac’ (p. 57). Admittedly though, later
he says that ‘So far, all we can say with some assurance is that Syriac
authors were probably acquainted with the text but that does not require
the existence of written or textual knowledge. As it is, the only
reliable witness for the existence of a Syriac translation – which we
are not in a position to date – is the Arabic Rhetoric itself. There are two types of evidence that have
been derived from the Arabic translation: Ibn al-Samḥ’s marginal notes
referring to a Syriac version; and terminological features of the
translation that point to a Syriac source text’ (p. 59). Vagelpohl then
criticizes M.C. Lyons, Aristotle’s Ars Rhetorica,
II-VIII and XXV-XXVI, and E. Panoussi, “The unique Arabic manuscript”,
for taking the existence of the Syriac version for granted, and
concludes that the evidences provided by them are far from being
conclusive (pp. 60-61). The extant Arabic version was also
the one used by Hermannus Alemannus to compose his Latin version of the text, a
circumstance that provides us with some help to decrypt certain obscure passages
comprised in the Arabic manuscript. See the reconstruction provided by M.C. Lyons, Aristotle’s Ars Rhetorica, XVI-XXI and XVI-XXI.
If the author, or rather the editor, H. Hugonnard-Roche, “L’intermédiaire syriaque dans
la transmission de la philosophie grecque à l’arabe: le cas de l’Organon d’Aristote”, Arabic
Science and Philosophy 1 (1991), 195. of the Arabic
manuscript was, as it seems, Ibn al-Samḥ, M.C. Lyons, Aristotle’s
Ars Rhetorica, III-IV. the text must have been
written before 1027, which is the year of his death, and this would imply that
the work significantly predates those of both Bar Hebraeus and Bar Šakko. The
rhetorical portion of the Parisian manuscript has been edited for the first time
by ʿAbdulraḥmān Badawī ʿA. Badawī,
Arisṭūṭālīs: al-ḫiṭābah. al-tarǧamah al-ʿarabīyah
al-qadīmah, Dirāsāt ʾislāmīyah 23 (al-Kuwait: Wakālah
al-maṭbūʿāt / Beirut (Liban): Dār al-qalam, 1959). and later
by Malcom Lyons, who also provided a Greek-based commentary and a bilingual
Greek-Arabic and Arabic-Greek glossary. M.C. Lyons, Aristotle’s Ars
Rhetorica. For a complete bibliography of all the Arabic works
dealing with Aristotelian rhetoric see M. Aouad, “La Rhétorique.
Tradition syriaque et arabe”, in Dictionnaire des
philosophes antiques, Volume I, ed. R.
Goulet (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1981) and M. Aouad, “La Rhétorique. Tradition arabe”, in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques.
Supplément, ed. R. Goulet (Paris : CNRS éditions, 2003).
None of these works display a translation, though a partial translation was made
by Uwe Vagelpohl, U. Vagelpohl, Aristotle’s
Rhetoric, 62-180, translated the first half of the third book
of the Arabic Rhetoric into English, commenting
upon it. He also provided a bilingual glossary of the terminology he
analyzed (pp. 216-327). leaving the task of the realization
of a comprehensive version in a modern language still a desideratum. Additionally, the lack of an Arabic-based commentary,
that uses the actual strings of text displayed by the edition, makes this work
hard to handle. Besides, the extant Arabic text is complicated and occasionally
impenetrable: moreover, it differs from the alleged Greek archetype in
numberless cases, probably due also to the misunderstanding of certain Syriac
words that were mistranslated into Arabic. See M.C. Lyons, Aristotle’s Ars
Rhetorica, Commentary, and E. Panoussi, “The unique Arabic
manuscript”, 234-235. U. Vagelpohl, “Reading and commenting on
Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Arabic”, in
Reading the past across space and time:
receptions and world literature, Geocriticism and Spatial
Literary Studies, eds. B.D. Schildgen and R. Hexter (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 169, suggests that some mistakes in the
Arabic translation might be due to the nature of Greek manuscripts
containing Aristotle’s Rhetoric,
with their capital letters, their scriptio
continua and no separating space or punctuation. Moreover,
he also supposes that the author of the Arabic translation, unsure
about the exact meaning of some passages, might have turned to a
very literal translation technique. The text
carries traces of so-called ‘demotic forms’ and colloquial variants, mixed with
inexplicable grammatical mistakes. M.C. Lyons, Aristotle’s Ars
Rhetorica, XIII-XVI. W. Heinrichs, “Review of Aristotle’s Ars Rhetorica by Malcom C. Lyons”, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamichen
Wissenschaften 1 (1984), 315, adds that the presence of this
feature is actually normal in this kind of texts, since they were
composed in “Middle-Arabic”. This, combined with Aristotle’s
elliptic prose, which must have puzzled both the Syriac and the Arabic
translators, and that the matter might have not been too familiar to them both,
brought about the extant text and its critical issues. On the oddities in this
Arabic text see also D.S. Margoliouth, “On the Arabic version of
Aristotle’s Rhetoric”, in Semitic studied in memory of
Rev. Dr. Alexander Kohut, ed. G.A. Kohut (Berlin: S. Calvary
and Co, 1897).
The first Arabic translation must have been produced during the so-called
‘Greek-to-Arabic Translation Movement’, a label used to denote a massive wave of
interest, started around the 8th century and
continuing roughly until the end of the 10th, among
Arab intellectuals towards Greek knowledge and works, which triggered the
translation of a great deal of books. The major contribution to this topic has
been provided by Dimitri Gutas, who is however skeptical about the importance of
the role played by the Syrians as the channel through which the Greek knowledge
passed to the Arabs. D. Gutas, Greek thought, Arabic
culture. The Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and Early
ʽAbbāsid Socienty (2
nd
-4
th
/8
th
-10
th
centuries) (London: Routledge, 1998), passim. A
different approach has been very recently expressed, for instance, by
S.C. Barry, “Was Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq the author of the Arabic translation
of Paul of Aegina’s Pragmateia? Evidence from the Arabic translations of
the Hippocratic Aphorisms and the Syriac lexicons of Bar Bahlul and Bar
ʿAli”, Journal of Semitic Studies 63:2 (2018),
459-460, who explains which role the Syrian élite played in this
movement. See also S.P. Brock, “Greek into Syriac and Syriac into
Greek”, Journal of the Syriac Academy (Baghdad) 3
(1977), C.A. Ciancaglini, “Traduzioni e citazioni dal greco in siriaco e
aramaico”, in I Greci: storia, cultura, arte, società.
Vol. 3: I Greci oltre la Grecia, Grandi Opere, ed. S. Settis
(Torino: Einaudi, 2001), J.W. Watt, “Greek philosophy”, 12-13, and S.C.
Barry, Syriac medicine and
Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Arabic translation of the Hippocratic
aphorisms, Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 39 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2018), XI-XVI. The same attitude,
specifically about the role of a Syriac version of Rhetoric
as the source of the Arabic one, is expressed by Vagelpohl, who concludes
that:
In the end, the textual evidence may be sufficient to make a
Syriac intermediary “likely”, but it does not amount to conclusive proof.
Irrespective of Watt’s arguments for a Syriac translation of the Rhetoric antedating Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and its potential
role in the production of our Arabic version, the contribution of the Syriac
translators to the Aristotelian rhetorical tradition in the Islamic world seems
negligible beyond faint echoes and vague influences. U. Vagelpohl, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 61. About the creation of
the Arabic version itself, more recently U. Vagelpohl, “Reading and
commenting”, 167, stated that it was created in an early phase of the
translation movement, and thus is likely to be the “old translation”
mentioned in the Ibn al-Nadīm’s Catalogue
(Fihrist).
Watt’s arguments in question are those put forward in the lucid analysis hosted
in the introduction to his edition and translation of the Cream of wisdom: J.W. Watt, Aristotelian
Rhetoric, 3-34. in short, Watt writes that the
Syriac translation was composed before the famous translator Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq
(808-873 CE)
See also M. Aouad, “Les fondements de la Rhétorique d’Aristote reconsidérés par Fārābī, ou le concept
de point de vue immédiat et commun”, Arabic Sciences
and Philosophy 2 (1992), 163. and that Bar
Hebraeus, in composing the only extant Syriac commentary to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, used a Syriac version of this latter text, that
was, admittedly:
much closer to the Old Arabic By ‘Old Arabic’ edition, Watt means the text
used as the source of the one preserved in the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France Ms. Arabe 2346. than to any Greek
recension known to us, yet quite frequently it uses the very same Greek
(loan) words as are present in the Greek text of Aristotle, where the Old
Arabic (and Ibn Sīnā) use a native Arabic term (p. 8).
This paper will use Watt’s solid argument J.W. Watt, Aristotelian
rhetoric, 24: ‘While the use of a Greek loanword current in
Syriac proves nothing in itself, when that loanword is the very word in
the Greek text of Aristotle, and the Arabic texts (ARar and IS) in the
same passage use a native Arabic term (or do not give it at all), that
strongly suggests that the loanword lay before Bar Hebraeus in a Syriac
version of the Rhetoric’ [ARar: Arabic version of
Rhetoric. IS: Ibn Sīnā’s Commentary to Rhetoric in the Kitāb
al-Šifāʾ]. in order to show how the presence of
loanwords vs. native words points to the use of a Syriac text as the source of
the Arabic version. Moreover, in the light of the massive work of translation
from Greek into Syriac, and later into Arabic, that started in Late Antiquity,
there is no reason to infer that the lack of a manuscript containing a Syriac
version of Aristotle’s Rhetoric implies that it never
existed at all.
A Trilingual Approach and Some Examples
In order to understand how the technical vocabulary of rhetoric developed
throughout the Syriac and Arabic environments, a comparative trilingual
approach, including also Greek terminology, proves to be a good starting point.
Actually, rhetoric has not been investigated extensively as other sciences have
been, probably also due to the fact that, normally, it does not fit into those
categories such as, for instance, philosophy (at least in its modern concept),
that have received greater attention by scholars. Admittedly, in a recent paper
about the creation of a Syriac philosophical lexicon, King discussed the
opportunity of including the subject within this kind of corpus, D. King, “Remarks on the future
of a Syriac lexicon based upon the corpus of philosophical texts”,
in Reflections on lexicography,
Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages 4, eds. R.A.
Taylor and C. E. Morrison C.E. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press,
2014), 74. arguing that Bar Šakko and Bar Hebraeus
treated Rhetoric as part of the Organon, as was customary for the users of the Alexandrian extended
version of Aristotle’s Organon, On the history of the transmission of
Aristotelian logic from Greek into Syriac, see H. Hugonnard-Roche,
La logique d’Aristote du grec au syriaque:
études sur la transmission des textes de l’Organon et leur
interprétation philosophique, Textes et Traditions 9
(Paris: Vrin, 2004). even though it would not be
considered today as philosophy strictu sensu, and he
concludes by saying that Arabic philosophy can serve as a tool to understand
late Syriac authors. D. King, “Remarks”, 77. Regardless of
the contemporary position of rhetoric inside the philosophical sciences, a
linguistic analysis comparing the vocabulary of the three languages – Greek,
Syriac and Arabic – allows new perspectives about the history of this science
and helps to trace the path of some phenomena involving the migration of words
throughout centuries.
This kind of analysis provides, inter alia, new evidences
about the knowledge that Antony of Taġrit might have had of Greek, and about
what kind of texts he was looking at while composing his treatises. Since he
was, most likely, a teacher of rhetoric, he should have been at least acquainted
with Greek tradition, but considering his (apparently unaware) use of Greek
technical terms, he does not appear too familiar with rhetorical works composed
in this language. He might also have used a Syriac version of Aristotle’s work
rather than its Greek original, as already stated, a conclusion that might be
supported by the confusion he makes between certain concepts, which he uses as
interchangeable and that would not have been misinterpreted if his source had
been a Greek one. An interesting example is provided by the words
ܐܦܘܕܝܟܣܐ/ܐܦܘܕܝܟܣܝܣ and ܬܚܘܝܬܐ used, for instance, in The fifth
book of Rhetoric. Antony uses them both with the meaning of
‘demonstration’, even though they correspond to two different Greek technical
terms: the first one is a loanword from ἀπόδειξις, while the second one corresponds to Greek παράδειγμα. It should be stressed, though, that Syriac
displays as well the loanword ܦܪܕܝܓܡܐ,
meaning ‘paradigm’. However, this loanword is absent from Antony’s fifth
treatise, but it can be spotted in Bar Hebraeus’s rhetorical work (see
J.W. Watt, Aristotelian rhetoric, 70).
Antony uses ܐܦܘܕܝܟܣܐ three
times in his fifth book, while he uses ܬܚܘܝܬܐ
constantly, with the meaning of ‘example’, ‘argument’, and ‘epidictic’ See, for
instance, this usage at page 64 and 65 of Watt’s 1986 edition.
as well. Therefore, a couple of times, he uses it with the clear
meaning of ‘demonstration’, suggesting that he did not have the Greek technical
word in mind, that would have suggested ἀπόδειξις instead. ܐܦܘܕܝܟܣܐ can
also be found in the Arabic translation of Rhetoric as
افودقطيقيّا, The word is absent from G.
Endress and D. Gutas, A Greek and Arabic lexicon
(GALex): materials for a dictionary of the medieval translations
from Greek into Arabic (Leiden: Brill, 1992-).
rather a loanword from ἀποδεικτική, but more
often this text features تثبيت. Attempted
conclusions to explain this latter phenomenon will be provided later. The
situation is represented also in Bar Hebraeus’s Cream of
wisdom: the author uses ܐܦܘܕܝܩܛܝܩܐ –
again a loanword from ἀποδεικτική – and
ܬܚܘܝܬܐ as synonyms, indicating that there
was no clear perception of the Greek technical term at this stage as well. G. Endress,
“Bilingual lexical materials in the Arabic tradition of the Hellenistic
sciences”, in Lexiques bilingues dans les domaines
philosophique et scientifique (Moyen Âge – Renaissance), Textes
et études du moyen âge 14, eds. J. Hamesse and D. Jacquart (Turhout:
Brepols 2001), 162, remarked something similar in bilingual lexicons,
stating that the explanation of Greek loanwords in Syriac was due to a
progressive fading of Greek knowledge already in the 9th century. Therefore, the
correspondence between Greek, Syriac and Arabic words, in this case, fluctuates
and appears not to be fixed.
However, going back to Antony’s fifth treatise, the author seems at least partly
aware of Greek technical vocabulary when he uses loanwords such as ܠܟܣܝܣ <
λέξις ‘style, way of speaking’ or ܛܘܦܣܐ < τύπος
‘figure, metaphor’, even though it is possible to spot some other examples
looking quite straightforward while concealing interesting phenomena: this is
the case of some loanwords bearing initial ῥ.
According to Butts, A.M. Butts, “The integration of consonants in
Greek loanwords in Syriac”, Aramaic Studies 14
(2016), 20-24. the history of Greek loanwords bearing
ρ with spiritus
asper mirrors their chronology. To be precise, initial spiritus asper was pronounced in Attic Greek as a
voiceless glottal fricative /h/ until Late Antiquity, when it apparently ceased
to be pronounced. A.M. Butts, Language change in
the wake of Empire: Syriac in its Greco-Roman context,
Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic 11 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns,
2016), 75. For an account on the realization and evolution of word
initial spiritus asper see T. Harviainen, “On the
loss of the Greek /h/ and the so-called aspirated rhō”, Studia Orientalia 45 (1976). Butts
states, for initial ῥ, that it ‘was realized as
a voiceless alveolar trill /r̥/ in Attic Greek’ that turned into a voiced
alveolar trill /r/ in the Roman period.
A.M. Butts, Language change, 20. See
also W.S. Allen, Vox Graeca: a guide to the
pronunciation of Classical Greek, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987) 41-45. H. Gzella, “Review of Language change in the wake of the Empire by
A.M. Butts”, Bibliotheca Orientalis
73: 5-6 (2016), 766, suggests that, comparing for instance Palmyrene
Aramaic examples, the changing in the realization of the
spititus asper might be conditioned by
historical spelling. The Syriac graphic reflex of
this phoneme was ܪܗ for loanwords acquired by the 5th century, while later it is represented by a simple ܪ, since,
according to Butts, the pronunciation of ῥ
changed in the meantime. This ῥ phenomenon is
represented in the orthography of the word for ‘rhetoric’ itself, as Antony’s
text preserves both ܪܗܛܪܘܬܐ and ܪܝܛܘܪܝܩܝ. According to the spelling of the
reflection of the initial ῥ, the former example
is the more ancient form, which entered Syriac before the 5th century, while the latter is a new loanword
reflecting the shift in the realization of initial ῥ. Under the morphological point of view, the two borrowing
strategies appear very different: ܪܗܛܪܘܬܐ, the
older one, bears the Syriac suffix –u
ṯā used to derive abstract substantives, S.P. Brock, “Secondary
Formations from Greek Loanwords in Syriac”, in Verbum
et calamus. Semitic and Related Studies in Honour of the Sixtieth
Birthday of Professor Tapani Harviainen, Studia Orientalia
published by the Finnish Oriental Society 99, eds. H. Juusola et al.
(Helsinki: The Finnish Oriental Society, 2004) 32-33, A.M. Butts, “The
use of Syriac derivational suffixes with Greek loanwords”, Orientalia 83 (2014), 209-217, and A.M. Butts,
Language change, 124. Incidentally, this
strategy is still productive in modern Neo-Aramaic dialects, like the
one spoken in Arbel. For instance, this derivational suffix is used in
combination with a loanword from Kurdish like pyş- (‘dirt’), giving as an outcome pisānúla
(‘decomposition’), with the passage of the dental spirant /ṯ/ to
/l/ (G. Khan, A grammar of Neo-Aramaic. The dialect of
the Jews of Arbel, Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1: The
Near and Middle East 47 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1999) 422.14). Elsewhere,
Khan (The Neo-Aramaic dialect of Barwar. Volume one: Grammar, Handbook of Oriental
Studies. Section 1: The Near and Middle East 96 (Leiden-Boston: Brill,
2008), 358-360) collected a series of nouns, belonging to the Christian
Neo-Aramaic dialect of Barwar, that use this strategy: the derivational
suffix works both with native nouns and with loanwords, like the Arabic
adjective wājib (‘necessary’) that turns into wajəbuṯa (‘duty’). meaning that
Syriac borrowed the word ῥήτωρ in the first
place and only afterwards derived from it a word for ‘rhetoric’. S.P. Brock, “Greek words in
Ephrem and Narsai: a comparative sample”, ARAM
11-12 (1999-2000), 441, and A.M. Butts, “The use of Syriac
derivational suffixes”, 213. T. Harviainen, “On the loss”, 29,
failed to recognize this adaptation strategy, saying instead that
ܪܗܛܪܘܬܐ is a loanword from
ῥητορῆσαι, even though there is no
reason to account a loanword of an abstract noun as coming from a verbal
form. The more recent loanword ܪܝܛܘܪܝܩܝ appears to be the true borrowed reflex of ῥητορική, which does not need any derivational
suffix. Combining the statements given so far, it is possible to trace the
following timeline: considering that, according to Butts, ܪܗܛܪܘܬܐ form should be placed around the 5th century, and considering the orthography of the
initial ῥ as simple ܪ, the terminus post quem of the ܪܝܛܘܪܝܩܝ
loanword is to be placed after the 5th century. A.M. Butts, “The
use of Syriac derivational suffixes”, 213. Moreover, the
presence of both loanwords in Antony’s text and the interchangeable way in which
they are used mean that they were not perceived as having different
connotations.
Later in time, the situation changes even more, as represented in Bar Hebraeus’s
Cream of wisdom: the author uses sparsely ܪܗܛܪܘܬܐ, ܪܝܛܘܪܝܩܐ
and ܪܗܝܛܘܪܝܩܐ, since, probably, at that point
the origin of loanwords was not meaningful anymore and the reasons for writing ܗ
were not clear. Considering also that the writers and scribes were acquainted
with both the ܪܗ and the ܪ reflexes in “rhetoric”, virtually nothing
prevented them from creating another outcome, which looks like a recent loanword
according to explanations given above, but bears the orthography ܪܗ. The same oscillation between two spellings of
the word for rhetoric is to be found in the Arabic text as well: There is no
trace of the Greek aspiration in the Arabic spelling. we
have thus ريطوريّة and ريطوريقا. Hence, the first one, ريطوريّة, appears to bear the same borrowing strategy of ܪܗܛܪܘܬܐ, employing a derivational suffix belonging
to the recipient language, while ريطوريقا looks
very much like Syriac ܪܝܛܘܪܝܩܝ, preserving the final <q>. Since the two
loanwords show borrowing patterns resembling the ones found in Syriac, and since
they are not used anywhere else in the Arabic tradition, they are likely to have
reached the Arabic version of the Parisian manuscript by means of a Syriac text
rather than directly from Greek. Moreover, none of these loanwords is used in
the Arabic commentaries to Rhetoric, such as, for
instance, Ibn Sīnā’s, Ibn Rušd’s, or even Ibn Ṭumlūs’s, since they all feature
خطابة, the same term used also by Badawī in
entitling his edition of the Parisian manuscript. ʿA. Badawī, Arisṭūṭālīs. For Ibn Sīnā see M.S. Salem,
al-šifa’, al-mantiq VIII – al-khaṭāba (La
logique VIII – La Rhétorique) (Cairo: al-Hay'ah al-Misriyah
al-'Ammah lil-Kitab, 1954); for Ibn Rušd see M. Aouad, Averroès (Ibn Rušd). Commentaire moyen à la Rhétorique
d’Aristote, édition critique du texte arabe et traduction
française, 3 volumes, Textes et Traductions 5 (Paris: Vrin,
2002), and for Ibn Ṭumlūs see M. Aouad, Le
Livre de la Rhétorique du philosophe
et médecin Ibn
Ṭumlūs (Alhagiag bin
Thalmus), Textes et Traductions 13 (Paris: Vrin, 2006). As
a matter of fact, though, Ibn Rušd uses ريطوريقى in the title of the first of the three books
of his commentary, but immediately followed by its Arabic
equivalent. Actually, خطابة is the substantive commonly used in Arabic to indicate
‘rhetoric’, instead of the Greek loanword: the presence of ريطوريقا and ريطوريّة in the Parisian manuscript looks like an unicum. Indeed, this treatise is not entitled ‘كتاب الخطابة’ as the other treatises on the subject,
but rather ‘كتاب ارسطوطالس المسمي ريطوريقا’,
followed later by the specification ‘which means الخطابة’.
About the outcome of Greek ῥ, something
resembling the aforementioned situation occurs when ῥ is in middle position, specifically double ῥ (ῤῥ). Butts
explains how the spelling of the Syriac form of παῤῥησία, meaning ‘to speak freely’, changed across the
centuries, thus representing a variation of the results of Greek gemination in
Syriac:
A.M. Butts, Language change , 68-69 and
80-82. before the 4th century the
word was written as ܦܪܪܣܝܐ, in the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries we
have ܦܪܗܣܝܐ,
This is the only form reported by T. Harviainen, “On the loss”, 29, who
states that the word was used in the early 4th century, but A.M. Butts, Language
change, 78, convincingly argued that, in Syriac, the outcome of
the Syriac phoneme was not represented by a voiceless glottal stop until
the 6th century. To explain the reasons why
the graphic representation of this phoneme changes from word to word in
Syriac, Harviainen says that the pronunciation of Greek ῥ started to be identified with ρ at a certain point (p. 32). He also adds
that it is not possible to provide an earlier date than the 4th century in which the change occurred, and
that it is impossible to study the development of ῥ in various positions inside the word due to the
‘scantiness of the material’ (later he adds that it is likely that the
change took place in the beginning of the 4th century for the medial position and developed later for the
initial one, p. 50). Some decades later, luckily, Butts succeeded in
this task. See A.M. Butts, “The integration” and A.M. Butts, Language change. Moreover, it must be highlighted
that A. Wasserstein, “A note on the phonetic and graphic representation
of Greek vowels and of the spiritus asper in the
Aramaic transcription of Greek loanwords”, Scripta
Classica Israelica 12 (1993), 206, wrote that the Syriac
ܗ is probably the reflex of the
Greek η following ῥ, rather than the aspiration of the
ῥ. This hypothesis was rejected by
Syriac scholars such as Brock, in S.P. Brock “Greek words in Syriac:
some general features”, Scripta Classica
Israelica 15 (1996), 256. while the 7th century displays a variation between ܦܪܗܣܝܐ,
ܦܪܪܣܝܐ and ܦܐܪܪܣܝܐ. However, Antony of Taġrit’s work preserves another form: in
the final part of the fifth book we find ܦܪܝܣܝܐ. The word is preserved in this
orthography in all the manuscripts used by Watt for his edition, namely the
Harvard one, Barsoum’s and Rahmani’s. Moreover, the aforementioned Jerusalem manuscript
230, belonging to the 14th century, shows
the same orthography ܦܪܝܣܝܐ, suggesting that this is not an accident or
a single scribal mistake. For a discussion on Watt’s sources see J.W.
Watt, The fifth book, edition, XI-XXV.
Since it would be unlikely that an error made in the antigraph is repeated in
all later copies without a single attempt at emendation, what we have might
correspond to the orthography employed around the 8th-10th centuries.
There is another notable example of the orthography ܦܪܝܣܝܐ in a painted
inscription preserved on the walls of the monastery of Deir al-Surian, in
Egypt. The inscription and
its related paintings have been studied by K. Innemée, G. Ochała and
L. Van Rompay, “A memorial for Abbot Maqari of Deir al-Surian
(Egypt)”,
Hugoye 18: 1 (2015).
The inscription is dedicated to the abbot Maqari, native of the
city of Taġrit, who passed away the 10th of May 889
CE: the whole painted group, including both written parts and images, was
commissioned shortly after his dead by his son Yuḥannon. K. Innemée, G. Ochała and L.
Van Rompay, “A memorial”, 157 and 163-165. On the presence of people
from Taġrit in the monastery of Deir al-Surian, see ibid. 171-180.
The Syriac inscription, at line 22, displays our loanword in the
same orthography used by Antony of Taġrit. What seems noteworthy is that the
spelling is linked to well educated people from Taġrit: Yuḥannon, who acquired
the title of abbot after Maqari’s death, knew both Syriac and Coptic, since he
added a second inscription in this latter language to his father’s epitaph, and
appears able to translate from one language into another. What we have here is
then an educated Taġritan that uses the orthography ܦܪܝܣܝܐ in a formal context, rather than the more classical
ܦܐܪܪܝܣܝܐ or ܦܪܗܣܝܐ spellings. From another Taġritan context, belonging again
to the (early) 9th century, comes another occurrence
of ܦܪܝܣܝܐ: the Book of
Divine Providence by Cyriacus of Taġrit. M. Oez, Cyriacus of
Tagrit and his Book on Divine Providence, 2 volumes,
Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 33 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press,
2012). I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Van
Rompay for drawing my attention to both these two occurrences and
for his notes on their contents. The manuscript
containing this text, Jerusalem, St. Mark’s monastery 129, HMML project number SMMJ
00129. F.Y. Dōlabānī, Catalogue. bears
the date 806 and, thanks to its colophon, we know that it was copied from
Cyriacus’ autograph only few years after its composition, while Cyriacus was
still alive. The text displays the substantive ܦܪܝܣܝܐ, the adjectival form ܦܪܝܣܝܝܬܐ and the adverb ܦܪܝܣܝܐܝܬ. M. Oez, Cyriacus of Tagrit,
397 and 393. Therefore, the orthography was certainly in use
in the Taġritan area during the 9th century.
However, it should be mentioned that Bar Šakko’s Book of
dialogues preserves a different reading of the word ܦܪܝܣܝܐ: even though he summarized Antony’s work,
Bar Šakko was composing in an autonomous way and might have normalized the word
according to the 7th century Yaʿqub of Edessa’s
spelling ܦܐܪܪܝܣܝܐ, since this orthography may
have appeared more classical or correct to him. Moreover, around the same
period, Bar Hebraeus used the same word at the end of the introduction to his
Metrical grammar, but he spells it ܦܪܗܣܝܐ, thus employing an older orthography. M. Farina, “Introduction”, in
Les auteurs syriaques et leur
langue, Études Syriaques 15, ed. M. Farina (Paris:
Geuthner, 2018), 2, recently edited some lines of the text and
translated them. Unfortunately, since ‘parrhesia’
is not employed in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, it is
consequently absent from its Arabic version. However, what we may infer from the
situation of the spelling of this term, bearing Butts’ useful table in
mind, A.M.
Butts, Language change , 82. is that
it evolved throughout the ages, until, probably, the 8th-10th century. This latter stage is
testified, at least for the Taġritan milieu, by Antony of Taġrit and his other
two fellow citizens, whereas, later, the spelling of ‘parrhesia’ suffers from a
general state of confusion, as testified by Bar Šakko and Bar Hebraeus, who,
actually, belong to the same period but opt for different orthographies of the
same word.
As partly shown so far, Antony’s text shows plenty of Greek loanwords, normally
accommodated and arranged in various ways, but, as already remarked, sometimes
the same concept conveyed by a loanword can be found in its Syriac translation
and used side by side with the other one, in apparent free variation.
Occasionally, Antony uses the Greek loanword first, followed by its Syriac
translation a little later, in what can be interpreted as a ‘reader-oriented’
composing strategy. A good example of this tendency is provided by the word for
‘syllable’ within the part of the treatise devoted to metrical patterns. Antony
provides a long excursus on metrical units in Syriac poetry, with examples and
explanations of the various meters based on syllabic patterns and on the way in
which they can be combined and exchanged. All along this treatise, then, he uses
the word for ‘syllable’, ܗܓܝܢܐ, combined with a number to express the names of
each type of verse (such as disyllable, trisyllable and so on). Every now and
then, though, he uses also a Greek loanword ܣܘܠܒܣ/ ܣܘܠܒܐ See H. Hugonnard-Roche,
“Lexiques bilingues grec-syriaque et philosophie aristotélicienne”, in
Lexiques bilingues dans les domaines philosophique
et scientifique (Moyen Âge – Renaissance), Textes et études du
moyen âge 14, eds. J. Hamesse and D. Jacquart (Turhout: Brepols, 2001),
10, for a translation of the Syriac explanation of this word as provided
by a bilingual Greek-Syriac lexicon. See also H. Hugonnard-Roche,
“L’intermédiaire”, 193, for the various ways in which Syriac authors
translated Greek technical vocabulary. or the Syriac
translation of the concept, ܫܩܠܐ. A similar strategy can be spotted in the
Arabic text, in the use, for instance, of the word meaning ‘element’, στοιχεῖον in Greek, and ܐܣܛܘܟܣܐ Syriac.
S.P. Brock, “Greek words”, 254, states that a possible explanation
of the presence of -s- at the end of
ܐܣܛܘܟܣܐ would be the analogy
with the Syriac result of Greek words ending in -os. However, even though the Greek technical
term is indeed στοιχεῖον,
the Syriac and consequently Arabic loanwords may not descend from
it, since there would be little means of explaining, apart from
Brock’s idea of analogy, the fall of the Greek final -n. Alternatively, one might posit a case of
semantic contamination with the words στίχος or στοῖχος, which would offer an explanation for the
consonantal pattern. It looks like a merging of terms, which have
different meanings in Greek, into a single one in Syriac, which has
the meaning of the first one, στοιχεῖον, but the aspect of the second one,
στίχος or στοῖχος. Moreover, in this scenario, the
realization in Syriac of the final -s would
be in harmony with other cases given by Brock. It should be also
noted that Brock (ibid., 257) states that the form ܐܣܛܘܟܣܐ is the
older one, while in texts from the 6th century onwards the word is rather spelled as sṭukaye. Hence, the spelling used by Antony
of Taġrit would be the more archaic one. On the use of a prosthetic
ܐ before loanwords beginning with ܣ, see A.M. Butts, “The
integration”, 26.
Ibn al-Samḥ, even though the language provided him with the
loanword اسطقساة, G. Endress and D. Gutas, GALex, fascicle 2, 218-220. similar
to the Syriac one, felt the need to use the Arabic translation حرف first, writing immediately afterwards that the
word means اسطقساة. Nevertheless, Ibn Rušd does
not seem to use this strategy. See M. Aouad, Averroès, vol. 2, 26. This strategy applies also
to the aforementioned case of افودقطيقيّا and
تثبيت: it might be inferred that certain
Greek loanwords were perceived as the proper ‘technical term’ indeed, but were
no longer understood by the readers, making it necessary to clarify them. H.
Hugonnard-Roche, “Lexiques bilingues”, 8, in discussing the bilingual
Greek-Syriac philosophical lexicons, highlights that, in the Baghdadi
lexicon that he is describing, occasionally, after the transliteration
of a Greek term, the translation is replaced or followed by an
explanation of the word itself. This correspond to the strategy
represented in the text under examination here. This
tendency of pairing translations and transliterations of foreign words appears
to be used by translators of all eras, even though, in the specific case, the
incidence of the phenomenon probably increases a bit after the 8th century, as a consequence of the general decrease
in the understanding of Greek.
Some concluding remarks should address the final portion of Antony of Taġrit’s
fifth treatise: apart from involving metric and rhetorical figures, this book
contains also a small but interesting final chapter on the law of assonant
letters, not entirely preserved. J.W. Watt, The fifth book,
trans., XX. This last part, dealing with what we could call
‘rhyming strategies’, displays a lexis on the edge between the grammatical and
the rhetorical domains: in a complex and intricate way, the author explains
which are the best ways to keep a constant rhyme at the end of each verse, and
how to make words alliterate the most. According to him, the more letters words
share, the better the result would be. He engages then in a series of examples,
starting from the keeping of the ܦܪܨܘܦܐ at the end of each verse-ending word.
ܦܪܨܘܦܐ has been translated here as ‘personal suffixes’, but should rather be
translated as ‘person’, as in the first meaning given by Moberg,
A. Moberg, Buch der Strahlen die grössere
Grammatik des Barhebräus.
Übersetzung nach einem kritisch berichtigten Texte, mit
Textkritischem Apparat und einem Anhang; zur Terminologie
(Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1907), 83*. or better
as ‘facie’ (figures), as in Balzaretti, C. Balzaretti, “Ancient
treatises on Syriac homonyms”, Oriens Christianus
81 (1997), 73. for the reason that follows. See also M. Farina, “La
linguistique syriaque selon Jacques d’Édesse”, in Les
auteurs syriaques et leur langue, Études Syriaques 15, ed. M.
Farina (Paris: Geuthner, 2018), 184, fn. 49. Antony lists
both various pronominal object suffixes and the verbal conjugations, but also
the enclitic forms of the pronouns, which are not written altogether with the
noun. To suppose that he was not aware of the differences looks somehow forced,
since, to our understanding, he was a teacher and he himself must have been
educated according to the Syriac version of the enkyklios
paideia (including grammar, logic and rhetoric). J.W. Watt, “Grammar, Rhetoric
and Enkyklios Paideia in Syriac”, Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 143 (1993).
What he probably means is that it is more elegant to keep the same ending all
along the poem, since a sudden change would alter the structure of rhyme and the
alliteration patterns. I wish to thank Margherita Farina for her help
with this chapter. This explanation is corroborated by the
fact that he usually chooses for his examples verbs and substantives with the
same number of syllables and differing only by one letter, the so-called
‘minimal pairs’.
Conclusive Remarks
Hopefully it has emerged from this analysis that the comparative study of Greek,
Syriac and Arabic rhetoric is productive and stimulating, apt to change some of
the previously fixed perspectives on the topic, which saw the Syriac world as
relatively uninterested in rhetoric and, consequently, Arabic rhetoric as
detached from any Syriac influence. The data presented here are just an
introduction to the potential that a trilingual comparative analysis has in
helping the scholarly community in the rhetorical field: the connections and
interdependences that have been proposed in the present paper hope to show how
much the aforementioned older perspectives need to be revised. Moreover, it
should be stressed that the Arabic version preserving Aristotle’s translation is
an incredibly rich source of vocabulary, since it stands quite different from
the one known in other treatises on Arabic rhetoric. It should be borne in mind
that rhetoric is a science which has an autonomous tradition in the Arab
culture: when referring to the Aristotelian science, خطابة is the word to use, which means ‘philosophical rhetoric’,
while when referring to Arab-Islamic rhetoric, بلاغة is in charge, in the sense of ‘literary rhetoric’ or, as in
Ghersetti, ‘rhétorique de l’illocutoire’. A. Ghersetti, “Quelques notes sur la définition canonique de
Balāġa”, in Philosophy
and arts in the Islamic world. Proceedings of the eighteenth
congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants held
at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Orientalia Lovaniensia
Analecta 87, eds. U. Vermeulen and D. De Smet (Leuven: Uitgeverij
Peeters, 1998), 57. For a detailed account on the differences between
ḫiṭāba and balāġa, and on the history of Arabic
rhetoric see Ph. Halldén, “What is Arab Islamic Rhetoric? Rethinking the
history of Muslim oratory art and homiletics”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 37: 1 (2005), who
explains how much, in fact, the two branches were both influenced by
Greek knowledge and how they interacted one with another. See also P.
Larcher, “Mais qu’est-ce donc que la balāġa ?”,
in Literary and philosophical rhetoric in the Greek,
Roman, Syriac and Arabic worlds, Europaea Memoria. Studien
und Texte zur Geschichte der europäische Ideen 66, ed. F. Woerther
(Hildesheim: Olms, 2009), 197-213. However, this
distinction is only partly reliable, since, actually, none of the types of
Arabic rhetoric appears to be entirely detached from foreign influences. Ph. Halldén,
“What is Arab Islamic Rhetoric”, 28.
The creation of a dictionary of Syriac rhetoric has been a desideratum for a long time, and the studies on the migration of words
from Greek to both Syriac and Arabic are still in their early days. This study
hopes to have shown how a triple focus serves as a key to reconstruct the
history of the transmission of words and can be used as a powerful philological
tool. Moreover, having the chance to study rhetorical loanwords in the light of
Brock’s diachronic researches on Syriac derivational strategies might add new
evidences to the data we already possess. See S.P. Brock, “Diachronic aspects of
Syriac word-formation: an aid for dating anonymous texts”, in V Symposium Syriacum 1988, ed. R. Lavenant (Roma:
Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium). Even though this study
concerns “native” Syriac neologisms, one can easily make good use of it
even with loanwords, since Brock’s categories apply to this field as
well. Moreover, the creation of calques based on Greek words, which use
Syriac derivational suffixes, can be easily spotted in Syriac rhetorical
lexis as well. On this topic see, for instance, one of the possible
explanations provided for the word ܩܘܡܕܘܬܐ in M. Nicosia, “La Rhétorique d’Aristote dans les milieux syriaques et arabes:
histoire d’un épisode de transmission intellectuelle dans l’Antiquité
Tardive”, in La philosophie en syriaque, Études
Syriaques 16, eds. E. Fiori and H. Hugonnard-Roche (Paris: Geuthner,
2019), 276-277. For all these reasons, my efforts are
revolving around the creation of a trilingual database of rhetorical vocabulary,
hoping to fill a gap that moves from Watt’s invaluable works towards a new
trilingual perspective that, eventually, will help in shedding new light on what
Antony of Taġrit defined:
the faculty of persuasive speech […] having the power and ability to
persuade the multitude and bring the crowd to attention and assent by what
is said.
J.W. Watt, “Syriac rhetorical theory”, 249.
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