Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism [addendum 2]
Ideas of Pythagoras and his school (including Philolaos) became known to the Islamic and to a lesser degree to the Jewish world since the end of the ninth century. Doxographical information about them can be found in Arabic translations of Aristotle, Plato, and above all two doxographical sources: the Placita philosophorum, which is attributed to Plutarch and is assumed to be compiled by Aetius Arabus (Daiber 1980), and a doxography that is attributed to Ammonius and is available only in an Arabic version (Rudolph 1989), much like the Arabic translation of the Placita apparently from the second half of the ninth century.
The impact of these sources, especially of Aetius, on Islamic thought (Rosenthal 1965, Daiber 1980), p. 337f.), on the Islamic philosopher al-Kindī, who died in 866 (Baffioni 1985), on the anonymous encyclopaedia of the Sincere Brethren from the tenth century (Netton 1991), and on the Jewish philosopher Saʿadia ben Joseph in the first half of the tenth century (Efros), was concentrated on the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, especially of the number four as source of the cosmos and its harmony, and also applied to music. Shahrastani's exposition of the Pythagorean doctrine (Baffioni 1983), pp. 96ff.), which mainly combined the reports of Aetius and in Arabic doxography attributed to Ammonius (Rudolph 1989), shaped the picture of Pythagoras among Islamic thinkers.
Moreover, Neo-Pythagorean texts on ethics contributed to the propagation of Pythagorean thought in Islamic and Jewish circles. Here, an important role was played by the Pythagorean Carmina aurea on ethical principles of life such as piety, modesty, justice, and self-examination as ways of the soul's assimilation to God. This text was known to the Arabs in an anonymous Arabic translation from the second half of the ninth century, which was integrated in Ḥunayn ibn Ishāq's Nawādir al-falāsifa (Anecdotes of the Philosophers), a collection of wise sayings that was often used by Muslim authors (Baffioni 1994, Miskawayh 1964), and that in the adaptation of Muhammad ibn ʿAlī al-Ans̄arī was translated into Hebrew (Daiber 1995).
Originally, the Carmina aurea were translated into Arabic with the commentary by Iamblichus (250–330 CE), a pupil of the neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry. This commentary, which is lost in its Greek original and preserved in Arabic (Daiber 1995), differs from that attributed to Proclus, which in a similar manner offers Neo-Pythagorean traditions in neoplatonic shape and which is preserved in a redaction by Abū l-Faradj ibn al-Tayyib from the eleventh century (Linley 1984; cf. Daiber, Islam 65 1988, 134–137). Iamblichus's commentary continues the discussion of his De vita pythagorica and Protrepticus and amalgamates Pythagorean, Platonicneoplatonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic ethics. It found an echo in al-Kindī, who in his "Summary on the Soul According to Aristotle, Plato, and Other Philosophers" describes the ascent and return of the soul to its divine origin through purification and increasing knowledge of God—a doctrine that is developed a century later in the encyclopaedia of the Sincere Brethren (Baffioni 1992) and is aluded to in Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna) (d. 1037) alleged Pythagoreanism (Chaix-Ruy 1959).
Iamblichus's neoplatonic tradition of the vita pythagorica is reflected in a treatise attributed to Plato, "The Exhortation concerning the Education of Young Men," which is preserved only in Arabic (Rosenthal 1941, pp. 383ff.). It can be traced back to his teacher, Porphyry, who in his History of Philosophy (lost in Greek and preserved in some Arabic fragments) had included the biography of Pythagoras (Rosenthal 1990). It seems plausible that the same neoplatonic tradition of the vita pythagorica also affected the alleged letter by Pythagoras to Hiero, the tyrant of Sicily, which is available in a clumsy ninth-century translation (Rosenthal 1975). Finally, Neo-Pythgorean ethics is mirrored in the numerous sayings attributed to Pythagoras and transmitted in Syriac and Arabic gnomologia (Gildemeister 1870, Levi della Vida 1910, Gutas 1975).
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