This book contains a new edition and English translation of the oldest commentary on Aristotle written in Arabic and preserved to this day, together with an extensive commentary. It is a compendium on the treatise De generatione et corruptione, written by the Imamite theologian and heresiographer Hasan b. Musa al-Nawbakhti (fl. ca. 900). To this day, apart from the title of more than forty works and numerous fragments-taken mainly from his magnum opus, the Book of the Doctrines and Religions (Kitab al-ara' wa-al-diyanat)-only a single treatise of his, the Book of Shi'i Sects (Kitab firaq al-shi'a), was known to us. The text sheds new light in several ways: firstly, on the the Arabic philosophical tradition, since it was composed during the obscure period between al-Kindi and al-Farabi (roughly, the 2nd half of the 9th c.); secondly, on the Greek tradition, since the author makes extensive use of Alexander's lost commentary on De generatione; thirdly, on the formative period of shi'ism, since it helps us to reconstruct how the author borrowed from the Aristotelian tradition the tools necessary to build up a new anthropology compatible with the doctrine of the Occultation which he inaugurated at the time.

The no longer extant commentary by Alexander of Aphrodisias (approx. 200 AD) on Aristotlea (TM)s Physics is one of the most important works of antiquity a," as a source text having influenced both the Greek commentators on Aristotle and - through the mediation of Arab scholarsa " Western medieval philosophy. This volume presents the first edition and study of nearly 700 recently discovered Byzantine scholia, which allow a more exact reconstruction of Alexandera (TM)s teachings on physics, and at the same time contribute to a better understanding of Aristotelianism and preclassical physics.

This book is the first study of the ontological system of Alexander of Aphrodisias (floruit c. 200 AD), famous for his commentaries on the works of Aristotle. By drawing not only on the entire known corpus of the commentator's works, but also on numerous new Greek and Arabic sources, Marwan Rashed aimsat defining Alexandera (TM)s place in the history of metaphysics. Alexandera (TM)s attempt to substantiate the objectivity of the Aristotelian form draws down the curtain on the phase of the Hellenistic peripatos, at the same time marking the beginning of medieval Aristotelianism.