Galen's On the Elements according to Hippocrates is an important source for physical doctrines circulating in late antiquity. The variety of atomistic doctrines that Galen brings into the discussion, as well as his arguments aimed at refuting them, were closely studied by the early kalām atomists. Of particular interest are the summaries of this text, which seem to have been written many centuries after Galen; some of them are products of early Islamicate culture. In this paper, we present an edition, translation, and study of a hitherto unknown summary, extent in a unique manuscript where it is attributed to Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq. Like the other summaries, it presents a doxography of physical doctrines, not always repeating precisely what Galen says, but rather reflecting the discourse of its period.

Sa‘d b. Mansūr Ibn Kammūna, a Jewish polymath whose writings are now receiving a good deal of scholarly attention, worked in Baghdad under the aegis of the Mongol rulers and their courtiers. Born early in the thirteenth century, so it seems, he was forced to flee the capital after rioters protested against his book which compared the three revealed monotheistic faiths; he died in the 1280s. His oeuvre includes a treatise on ophthalmology, no longer extant; quotations from it are however available in the writing of another ophthalmologist, Sadaqa ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shādhilī. From these we learn that Ibn Kammūna practiced medicine in Aleppo (Halab).

Sa‘d ibn Mansūr Ibn Kammūna was a Jewish physician-philosopher of Iraqi origin who flourished in the thirteenth century (d. 1284). Best known for his original and comparative inquiry into the three monotheistic faiths, whose publication nearly cost him his life, he was, in fact, a very productive thinker, and a scholar well in tune with developments in the philosophy and science of his day. He had personal contact with some leading intellectuals, and he played an important role in the diffusion of some new trends of thought. His legacy, in the form of commentaries, correspondence, and original works, is now being studied in earnest.

On some of the end-leaves of a Bible manuscript someone has copied out a passage from the Theology of Aristotle in Hebrew translation. The passage deals with the immunity of person of intellect from magical manipulation. No other copies of this passage in Hebrew are known to exist. The dependence of the translator upon the so-called “long version” of the Theology, specifically the copy in St Petersburg, is demonstrated, and it is suggested that the translator may be Shem Tov ibn Falaquera. The passage differs significantly from other versions of the Theology, and from Plotinus, in placing intellectual achievement ahead of ethical perfection in the scale of values.

Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari was written in response to the challenge posed to Judaism by a highly spiritual, nondenominational philosophy. Science, especially that embodied in the Hellenistic heritage, was a major component of philosophy; thus, if for no other reason than to make Judaism a serious competitor, Halevi had to show that the Jewish tradition as well possessed a body of scientific knowledge. The superiority of the Jewish teachings was demonstrated chiefly by appeal to the criteria of tradition, consensus, and authority, which, in Halevi's judgement, were in practice the criteria most influential in deciding scientific opinion. Despite the rather unique setting for the book, and the wide range of stances Halevi develops, the Kuzari was rather quickly and smoothly absorbed into the mainstream of Jewish religious thought.

For many centuries Jews in Arabic-speaking lands have transcribed books written by non-Jews into the Hebrew alphabet; the language remains Arabic, but the writing is Hebrew. This was done mainly for the benefit of those who knew the Arabic language but not the script. The majority of these transcriptions are scientific or philosophical texts. Transcriptions are of value to scholars for two reasons. Some entire texts, or more complete or accurate versions of texts, are preserved only in transcription. In addition, the choice of texts transcribed is very instructive concerning the cultural and intellectual interests of Jews. A century ago the great bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider published a description of the transcriptions known to him. We have undertaken to prepare a full catalogue. In this article we offer a preliminary relisting of those manuscripts that we have examined recently.

I should like to discuss briefly three Arabic treatises that are quite different from one another with regard to content, authorship, and provenance. They do, however, share one interesting feature. Each one survives in just two manuscript copies, both in a Yemeni hand, the one in Arabic script, the other also in the Arabic language but written in Hebrew characters. The circumstances of their survival are instructive concerning the intellectual histories of both Jews and Muslims in the Yemen, and especially with regard to the relationships that obtained between these two communities. We may also add that none of these treatises, each of which is of some interest to its respective field, has been the subject of even a cursory study.

The people of Yemen as a whole, and the Jews of that country in particular, possess a very rich cultural heritage, including achievements in the field of astronomy. The medieval astronomical sources were the subject of an exhaustive study by David A. King (Mathematical Astronomy in Medieval Yemen, Malibu 1983). Some material concerning Jewish interest in the subject was collected by Bernard R. Goldstein (The Survival of Arabic Astronomy in Hebrew, J. for the Hist, of Arabic Science 3, 1979, 31-39, note 2c.) The author of this paper has recently completed a monograph on the exact sciences among the Jews of Yemen. In this paper we present some discrete items of mainly bibliographic interest which emerged from that study. Note that our sources are all Arabic manuscripts, written in Hebrew characters.