Assuming the crucial interest of Arabic material for the recovery of the textual tradition of some Greek texts of mechanics, the following article aims at presenting a partial survey of the Graeco-Arabic transmission in the field of mechanics. Based on new manuscript material dating from the ninth to the twelfth century, it investigates the textual and theoretical traditions of two writings ascribed to Aristotle and Euclid respectively and transmitted to Arabo-Islamic culture in fragmentary form. The reception and the impact of (...) the Peripatetic Mechanics are analyzed on the basis of texts edited by al-Khāzinī as well as by the comparative study of the proof of the law of the lever in three authors: Pseudo-Aristotle, Thābit ibn Qurra, and al-Isfizārī. The codicological analysis of the extant manuscripts of Maqāla fī ‘l-mīzān – a rather systematic treatise on the balance ascribed to Euclid – leads to the assumption that it is a Greek fragment edited in Arabic. This reconstruction of the Arabic tradition of Euclidean mechanics is further elaborated by an annotated synopsis of al-Isfizārī's systematic recension of the text. (shrink)

This article investigates the Arabic tradition of the Problemata Mechanica, a Greek text of mechanics ascribed to Aristotle, of which it has often been said that Arabic classical culture had been ignorant of it. Against this prevailed claim, it is shown that the Arabo-Muslim scholars had access to the text at least in the form of an abridged version entitled Nutaf min al-iyal edited by al-Khāzinī in Kitāb mīzān al-ikma . The article includes the critical edition of the Arabic text (...) of the Nutaf on the basis of the two extant manuscripts and its English translation. Finally, the mechanical theory in the Nutaf is characterized briefly. (shrink)

The articles collected in this volume have their origin in an international workshop dedicated to “Experience and Knowledge Structures in Arabic and Latin Sciences.” Specialists from Great Britain, France, Denmark, Spain, Morocco, the United States, and Germany gathered in Berlin in 1996 in the context of an interdisciplinary research project on the history of mechanical thinking at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. The workshop initiated a process of discussion focused on problems of the intercultural transmission and (...) transformation of knowledge. The present double issue is an outcome of this ongoing discussion. (shrink)