Reading and Commenting on Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Arabic

The reception of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Medieval Islam must seem strange: a flawed Arabic translation of the Rhetoric gave rise to numerous ingenious but ultimately misguided commentaries. Even though its translator and the commentators clearly knew too little about its literary, political, and social background to understand a text that was so deeply rooted in Greek culture, they nonetheless mounted a vigorous effort to decode it. The chapter surveys its remarkably diverse reception tradition and shows that, in spite of their frequent failure to grasp Aristotle’s meaning, the translator and commentators firmly implanted the Rhetoric in the Muslim philosophical tradition and introduced Aristotle’s rhetorical thought into a wide range of different fields.