Abstract

Ibn Sina's al-Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at has attracted uneven attention in modern scholarship. The textual problems associated with this collection of private correspondence between Ibn Sina and his students and colleagues have presented a barrier to evaluations of the Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at as a source for the life and philosophy of Ibn Sina. ;A major concern for our understanding of the recensional development of the Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at is determining the nature of the original codicological forms of the texts. Chapter One, Part One assesses the references made by the participants of the correspondence to these codicological forms. Chapter One, Part Two is a palaeographical and codicological study of the extant manuscripts of the Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at. ;Chapter Two addresses the Recension Process of the Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at. Based on the information from the manuscripts and historical material on Ibn Sina and the other participants, I set forth a theory concerning the recensional development of the Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at. I also examine the contemporary and near-contemporary usages of the title al-Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at, including one in the putative Ibn Sina - Abu Sa`id correspondence, which I determine to be a later forgery. Chapter Two concludes with a study of the term mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at in the correspondence which suggests that the title al-Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at does not originate with the participants. ;In Chapter Three I develop biographical portraits of the three figures who engaged in the correspondence with Ibn Sina---Bahmanyar, al-Kirmani, and Ibn Zayla---and characterize their respective roles and intellectual contributions to the correspondence. ;In Chapter Four, I give synopses of the texts that collectively constitute the Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at. Each synopsis includes a characterization of the text; an assessment of the place it occupies in the sequence of the correspondence; and its date of composition. In identifying the sequence of the texts of the Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at in this way, it is hoped that scholars can begin to study the Mubah&dotbelow;at&barbelow;at as a textual record of a sequential philosophical discussion that correctly plots the course of Ibn Sina's later intellectual developments