The Arabic Physiologus. Edition, Translation, Commentary. PhD dissertation at the University of Wien.

The aim of my dissertation was to edit the available manuscripts of the Arabic Physiologus text. Five manuscripts were used for ths purpose: One from the American University of Beirut, one of the Universite St. Joseph in Beirut, one from Rijksbibliothek in Leiden, one from the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and the last from the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome. The Physiologus is a Christian text, originally written in Greek. It describes in quite a simple manner characteristics of animals, plants, and stones and how they can be interpreted by Christians. This text was very popular at its time and was translated into Latin from where it was translated in many other languages in Europe. From the Greek the text was translated into Syriac-Aramaic, Arabic and Ethiopian. The doctoral thesis tries besides of the editing of the Arabic version of the text to integrate the Arabic Physiologus-version within the other Oriental translations available. The five Manuscripts used could be classified into two groups of manuscripts belonging together and one manuscript, being very different from the others. One result of the thesis is that the Arabic Physiologus is representing one of the older traditions of the text. - [Abstract]

Language: German