Beyond Translation: How Much Did the Late Byzantines Know About Arabic Philosophy?

This talk explores the pathways by which philosophical knowledge moved between Byzantium and the Islamicate world in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It goes beyond the conventional hunt for translations of narrowly defined philosophical texts from Arabic into Greek, considering additional channels, including Latin and Hebrew intermediaries, instances of oral exchange, and cases of direct Byzantine access to Arabic materials without translation. In doing so, it also reflects on the shifting definitions and limits of “philosophy” in both zones and assesses the scope and boundaries of Byzantine familiarity with Islamic philosophical literature. Drawing on Arabic and Greek sources alongside Latin and Hebrew witnesses, the talk reconstructs a multicolored picture of exchange and transmission. The main argument is that late Byzantine thinkers knew much more about philosophy from the Islamicate world than is often believed and, at times, participated in a continuous, interconnected philosophical environment that included their Muslim contemporaries.