Denys le Thrace, Georges Chœroboscus et Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq. La grammaire grecque pratique et théorique

Abstract

Following on from a 2018 publication on the origin of the Greek lemmas listed in Bar Bahlūl’s Syro-Arabic Lexicon, this article seeks evidence for the existence of a Greek manual for Arabic-speaking students, composed by the famous Greek translator and lexicographer Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq. This lost work is described by Ancient Arabic historiography as a manual consisting of two parts. We hypothesize that it was structured, on the one hand, into a theoretical section, in the form of an Arabic adaptation of the Technē attributed to Dionysius Thrax, and, on the other, into a practical section, consisting of a series of analyses of Greek words from the Psalms, on the model of the Epimerismi of Choeroboscus. In support of this theory, we present a list of some fifty Greek metalinguistic terms, taken from Bar Bahlūl’s Lexicon, whose Arabic translation can be traced back to Ḥunayn and thus to his Greek textbook.

Keywords

• Bar Bahlūl
• Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq
• Tekhnē
• Epimerismi
• Theoretical/Practical grammar
• Syriac/Arabic translation of Greek metalanguage