Kitāb al-Hayawān


The Kitāb al-Ḥayawān is an Arabic translation in 19 treatises.
Historia Animalium : treatises 1-10

De Partibus Animalium : treatises 11-14

De Generatione Animalium : treatises 15-19
Medieval Arabic tradition ascribes the translation to Yahya Ibn al-Batriq, but contemporary scholarship does not support this attribution. This Arabic version was the source for the Latin translation De Animalibus by Michael Scot in Toledo before 1217. Several complete manuscript versions exist in Leiden, London, and Tehran), but the text has been edited in separate volumes corresponding to the three Aristotelian sources. The Egyptian existentialist philosopher Abdel Rahman Badawi edited Treatises 1-10 as Ṭibā‘ al-Ḥayawān and Treatises 11-14 as Ajzā al-Ḥayawān. Treatises 15-19 first appeared in the Aristoteles Semitico-Latinus series in 1971. This series then published Treatises 11-14 in 1979 and Treatises 1-10 in 2018.

In the Christian West

Finally, Michael Scot’s early 13th-century Latin translation of the Kitāb al-hayawān, De Animalibus, is worthy of mention as the vehicle of transmission into Western Europe. It was alleged by Roger Bacon that Scot "had appropriated to himself the credit of translations which more properly belonged to one Andreas the Jew." This may mean that he had help with the Arabic manuscript, or that he worked fully or in part from a Judaeo-Arabic or Hebrew version. Scot's De Animalibus is available in a partial edition.