From Antony of Tagrit to the Arabic version : the Syriac technical vocabulary of rhetoric and the migration of words

Nicosia, Mara

Abstract

Rhetoric was part of the borrowed Greek educational system of the Enkyklios paideia, together with logic and grammar. However, the technical terminology had to be adapted, so the question is which strategies were used to create the vocabulary of Syriac rhetoric. This paper aims at analyzing some meaningful loanwords, adaptations, calques and native words used to build this specialized lexis. A manuscript containing the Syriac version of Aristotle’s Rhetoric was never found, and we need to rely upon other texts that dealt with this topic: Antony of Taġrit’s Books of Rhetoric, a part of Bar Šakko’s Book of dialogues and a part of Bar Hebraeus’s Cream of wisdom. If we wish to have a deeper appreciation of this vocabulary, however, we need to take into account the Arabic version of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, since it displays some interesting peculiarities that can help us in the reconstructive process of what the Syriac version might have looked like. A very useful tool would be the compilation of a database comparing the Syriac lexis found in the abovementioned texts with the ones used in the Greek and Arabic versions of Aristotle’s book: actually, this method already highlighted some surprising phenomena that will be presented in this paper, in order to show how trilingual comparison can be an important tool to shed some light on the translation movement of both texts and cultural patterns that started in Late Antiquity.

Citation

Nicosia, M. (2020). From Antony of Tagrit to the Arabic version : the Syriac technical vocabulary of rhetoric and the migration of words. Hugoye (Washington, D.C.), 23(1), 61-97

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Feb 28, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Mar 13, 2023
• Journal: Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Stuydies
• Print ISSN: 1937-318X
• Electronic ISSN: 1097-3702
• Publisher: Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 61-97
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1178478
• Publisher URL: https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv23n1nicosia