Ptolemy-el-Garib explained

Ptolemy-el-Garib (Arabic, more correctly al-gharīb, "Ptolemy the foreigner," explained as meaning "Ptolemy the unknown") (fl. c. 300 AD)^[1] was a Hellenistic pinacographer, probably of the Peripatetic school, who wrote a Life of Aristotle notable for its catalog of Aristotle's works. This work survives in an Arabic manuscript in Istanbul.^[2] A critical edition, with French translation was published by Marwan Rashed.^[3]

Historical context

The excerpts known prior to this discovery were collected in Ingemar Düring's Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Göteborg 1957), pp. 221–231.

Marian Plezia has cast doubt on the idea that Ptolemy-el-Garib's Life was an important source of later Neoplatonic lives of Aristotle.

References

• Hans Gottschalk, "The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators," in Aristotle Transformed (ed. Richard Sorabji, 1990), pp. 56f. n. 5.

Further reading

• Ingemar Düring, "Ptolemy's Vita Aristotelis rediscovered," in Philomathes: studies and essays in the humanities in memory of Philip Merlan, ed. Robert B. Palmer and Robert Hamerton-Kelly (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971), pp. 264-269 - includes an English translation of Ptolemy's preface.
• Dimitri Gutas, "The spurious and the authentic in the Arabic Lives of Aristotle," in Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: the Theology and other texts. Edited by Ryan William Francis, Kraye Jill, and Schmitt Charles Bernard. London: Warburg Institute. University of London 1986. pp. 15-36 (Reprinted as Chapter VI in D. Gutas, Greek philosophers in the Arabic tradition, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000).
• Marian Plezia, "De Ptolemaeo pinacographo," Eos 63 (1975), pp. 37–42.
• - -, "De Ptolemaei Vita Aristotelis," in Aristoteles: Werk und Wirkung, vol. 1 (Aristoteles und seine Schule), ed. Jürgen Wiesner (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1985), pp. 1-11.

External links

• The Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Writings: Hesychius and Ptolemy al-Garib. A Survey of Current Research
• Bibliography on the Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Writings contains a list of studies on Ptolemy-el-Garib

Notes and References

1. Tarán, Leonardo; Gutas, Dimitri. Aristotle Poetics: Editio Maior of the Greek Text with Historical Introductions and Philological Commentaries. Leiden: Brill (2012), p. 16.
2. Gottschalk 1990 reported that an edition was in preparation by Marian Plezia and Józef Bielawski. Plezia died in 1996, Bielawski in 1997.A transcription of the Ms. Ayasofia 4833 fol. 10b-11a, 14b-18a (with the Catalogue of Aristotle's works) is now available in: Christel Hein, Definition und Einteilung der Philosophie. Von der spätantiken Einleitungsliteratur zur arabischen Enzyklopädie, New York: Peter Lang, 1985, pp. 415-439).
3. Ptolémée "al Gharib", Épître à Gallus sur la vie, le testament et les écrits d’Aristote, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2021.