KitÄb an-NawÄmÄ«s (The Book of Laws), an anonymous tenth-century philosophical work attributed to Plato, constitutes a rare example of pre-Avicennan Arabic philosophy, combining Neoplatonic metaphysics and illustrative stories set in ancient Greece with the piety and ethical principles of early Islam. This study offers edition, translation and commentary of KitÄb an-NawÄmÄ«s, and highlights the role the work played in the medieval Islamic reception of Platonism, as well as its impact on later philosophical discourses in Safavid Iran (1501-1722). The study thus adds to our understanding of the development of early Arabic philosophy, the transmission of antique Greek philosophical works into the Islamic tradition, and the medieval reception of Platonism more broadly.
Georges Tamer holds the Chair of Oriental Philology and Islamic Studies and is founding director of the Bavarian Research Center for Interreligious Discourses at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research focuses on QurʾÄnic hermeneutics, philosophy in the Islamic world, Arabic literature and interreligious discourses. His publications include: Islamic Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity (SUNY, 2024), Handbook of QurʾÄnic Hermeneutics, 7 volumes (De Gruyter, 2023-).
Pascal Held is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. He has published a monograph (Baghdad during the time of Ê¿Abd al-QÄdir al-JÄ«lÄnÄ« (Gorgias Press, 2022)) and a number of articles on Sufism and Islamic intellectual history more generally.
Academic libraries, specialists, postgraduate students of Arabic and Islamic philosophy