Books by Sara Abram
La dottrina dell’anima di ʾAbū Sulaymān al-Siǧistānī negli scritti di ʾAbū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī. Le Notti 13 e 35 del Kitāb al-ʾimtāʿ wa-l-muʾānasah, Padova: Il Poligrafo. Subsidia Mediaevalia Patavina 16, 2024
This book offers the edition of the Arabic text, the Italian translation, and a line-by-line comm... more This book offers the edition of the Arabic text, the Italian translation, and a line-by-line commentary of the most significant writings for reconstructing the doctrine of the soul of the persian philosopher ʾAbū Sulaymān al-Siǧistānī al-Manṭiqī (ca. 912-985). These are Night 13 and Night 35 of the Kitāb al-ʾimtāʿ wa-l-muʾānasah (The Book of Pleasure and Conviviality), a literary work composed by the man of letters ʾAbū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (922/932-1023), the best-known disciple of al-Siǧistānī. The edition of the Arabic texts is based on a new collation of the two manuscript witnesses of the book, preserved today in Milan and Istanbul, and is accompanied by their first translation into a Western language. The commentary highlights the specific features of al-Siǧistānī’s thought and its connections with both Greek and Arabic philosophy of the time. It also includes translations and references to other works by al-Tawḥīdī dealing with related subjects, especially texts from the Kitāb al-Muqābasāt (Borrowings), a collection of notes he compiled during the debates held in al-Siǧistānī’s maǧlis. In addition, the commentary presents numerous translations of passages from philosophical works by authors contemporary with or prior to al-Siǧistānī, with the aim of reconstructing the cultural environment in which his ideas took shape.
Journal Articles by Sara Abram
Studia graeco-arabica, 2023
This article presents an edition and translation of the Treatise on the Immortality of the Ration... more This article presents an edition and translation of the Treatise on the Immortality of the Rational Soul of Man According to Aristotle’s Opinion (M. fī baqāʾ al-nafs al-nāṭiqa min al-insān ʿalā raʾy Arisṭūṭālis) by the Christian philosopher and physician Abū al-Ḫayr al-Ḥasan ibn Suwār (942-post 1017). Its importance lies in the fact that: (i.) it provides the sole testimony concerning the doctrine of the immortality of the soul developed by a philosopher who was a significant representative of the intellectual and exegetical life of his day; (ii.) it constitutes concrete evidence of the fact that the philosophical activity of the Baghdad Aristotelians did not concern only Aristotle’s logic, physics, and metaphysics, but also psychology and noetics; and (iii.) it transmits literal quotations from lost Arabic translations, representing their earliest testimony: three lemmata from Aristotle’s De anima and one from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ De anima in Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn’s (830-911) translations.
Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale, 2020
This article offers the introduction, the Italian translation and the commentary of the Notes on ... more This article offers the introduction, the Italian translation and the commentary of the Notes on Admissible and Inadmissible Astrological Judgements (Nukat fī mā yaṣiḥḥu wa-mā lā yaṣiḥḥu min aḥkām al-nuǧūm) by Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 950). It was not transmitted directly by its author, and did not reach us in its definitive version but only in the form of notes copied by a grammarian named Abū Isḥāq al-Baġdādī. In thirty short chapters al-Fārābī writes down what is accessible and what is inaccessible to astrological predictions, which elements of this science should be accepted, and which ones are to be rejected.
Book Chapters by Sara Abram
The Digital Turn in Religious Studies. Research, Services, Infrastructures, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 207-222, 2025
This paper investigates the use of a ḥadīṯ within a corpus of medieval Qurʾānic commentaries (taf... more This paper investigates the use of a ḥadīṯ within a corpus of medieval Qurʾānic commentaries (tafāsīr) concerning the mysterious encounter between Muḥammad and a group of ǧinn (Q 46:29; 72:1). A comparative analysis shows that ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq al-Ṯaʿlabī (d. 1035) chooses a version that aligns more closely with earlier exegeses than with those found in canonical ḥadīṯ collections (e.g., the Ṣaḥīḥayn). His version closely resembles, in both content and form, the accounts found in the Tafsīr by al-Ṭabarī (d. 923) and, indirectly, a transmission line traceable at least as far back as the Tafsīr by Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 767). This study highlights the active role of the Qurʾānic commentators in selecting and reshaping inherited material for interpretive purposes, contributing to a broader reflection on the relationship between tafāsīr and ḥadīṯ literature.
Introduzione, in al-Fārābī, L’uno e l’unità. Introduzione, testo arabo, traduzione e commento di C. Martini Bonadeo con S. Abram, L. Farina, G. Mandolino, M. Zarantonello. Pisa: Pisa University Press 2023 (Greco, Arabo, Latino. Le vie del sapere. Testi 6), pp. 1-13.
“L’uno è detto in molti modi”. Così inizia in medias res il breve trattato Sull’uno e sull’unità ... more “L’uno è detto in molti modi”. Così inizia in medias res il breve trattato Sull’uno e sull’unità in cui al-Fārābī, sul modello di Aristotele in Metafisica Delta 6 e Iota 1 e 6, presenta una disamina linguistica della polisemia dei termini ‘uno’ e ‘molteplice’. La riflessione che vi presenta è cruciale per la comprensione non solo del pensiero logico del filosofo, ma anche della sua riflessione metafisica. Secondo al-Fārābī, infatti, soggetto primo della metafisica, intesa come scienza universale, è ciò che è comune a tutti gli enti: l’essere e l’uno e i loro contrari, il non-essere e la molteplicità. Unità ed essere, sono coestensivi, massimamente universali, e pericolosamente equivoci. Nel volume questo difficile e ingiustamente dimenticato trattato di al-Fārābī è rivisto criticamente, tradotto e commentato.
Averroè (Ibn Rušd), in: L’analogia dell’essere. Testi antichi e medievali, a cura di Giovanni Catapano, Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, Rita Salis, Padova University Press, Padova, 2020
La presente sezione antologica si propone non solo di accostare alcuni importanti passi di Averro... more La presente sezione antologica si propone non solo di accostare alcuni importanti passi di Averroè riguardanti l’analogia – da lui differentemente espressa con i termini tanāsub, tartīb wa tanāsub, munāsaba e con le perifrasi ašyāʾ mansūba ilā šayʾ wāḥid (in relazione a un’unica cosa) oppure ilā ṭibāʿ wāḥid (a un’unica natura) – ma anche di rispecchiare, almeno parzialmente, l’evoluzione esegetica del filosofo di Cordova nei suoi commenti alla Metafisica di Aristotele. Si tratta, infatti, di estratti (T48 e T49) provenienti dalla giovanile Epitome della Metafisica (c. 1160) e di un passo (T50) dall’ultima opera scritta prima di morire: il Commento grande alla Metafisica (tra il 1192 e il 1194). Seguono, prima della sintesi dei contenuti dei passi in traduzione, un’introduzione all’autore e alla fase esegetica cui appartengono i testi proposti.
La dottrina dell’analogia dell’essere nella « Metafisica » di Aristotele e i suoi sviluppi nel pensiero tardo-antico e medievale, a cura di R. Salis, (Subsidia Mediaevalia Patavina, 14), Il Poligrafo, Padova, 2019
The present paper aims to analyse a lesson, held by the Muslim philosopher Abū Sulaymān al-Siǧist... more The present paper aims to analyse a lesson, held by the Muslim philosopher Abū Sulaymān al-Siǧistānī (d. 985), about the equivocal term ‘one’ and its definitions as conveyed by the man of letters Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 1023) in his muqābasa 82. In particular, it aims to stress the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic roots of al-Siǧistānī’s doctrines and the links they intertwined with the almost contemporary philosophical debates. The muqābasa is organised in two different sections. In the first part, al-Siǧistānī identifies eight different senses of the ‘one’, all linked to the works written by Aristotle or by his late-antique commentators. The second section, instead, concerns which sense is the most suitable to the First Being. By reading it, it is possible to identify in nuce some of the most important doctrines of Arabic Neoplatonism to which al-Siǧistānī seems to adhere to: the three super-sensible principles (i.e. One, Intellect and Soul); the different degrees of participation to causality by the single entities; man as microcosm and his spiritual ascent to the intelligible reality. 
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Books by Sara Abram
Journal Articles by Sara Abram
Book Chapters by Sara Abram