The Text Of The Arabic Plotinus. Prolegomena To A Critical Edition

Abstract

The Arabic translation of Plotinus’s Enneads IV–VI was made during the first half of the ninth century AD and subsequently spread throughout the Islamic world in various forms and under different names. The readings of the Arabic translation, insofar as they reflect the Greek tradition and are not corruptions or variations strictly within the Arabic tradition, are fully taken into account and entered in the apparatus or the text. The edition of each one of these parts of the Arabic Plotinus (AP) will require attention to its own specific problems, but the greatest difficulty is presented by that of the short Theology . The philological annotation of Plotinus’s Greek will help the reader locate the problems to comprehension presented by the Greek text, problems which the Arabic translator had to solve when preparing his own version. Keywords: Arabic Plotinus (AP); Arabic tradition; Greek tradition; philological annotation; theology