Dimitri Gutas

Professeur de littérature et de civilisation arabes et gréco-arabes, Yale University

Dimitri Gutas is Professor of Classical Arabic studies and Graeco-Arabic studies at Yale University. He has worked extensively on the formation and development of the medieval Islamic intellectual tradition, with particular emphasis on its linguistic, social, and ideological aspects. He has written about the transmission of Greek scientific and philosophical works into the Islamic world through the momentous Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad from the eighth to the tenth centuries AD, in Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London 1998), which has been translated into seven languages. He is also an authority on the Arabic philosophical tradition, in particular its greatest exponent, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), on whom he wrote Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Introduction to Reading Avicenna’s Philosophical Works (Leiden 1988). A collection of his articles is to be found in Greek Philosophers in the Arabic Tradition (Aldershot 2000). He continues to edit, with G. Endress of Bochum University, A Greek and Arabic Lexicon (Leiden 1992ff.). He is currently working on critical editions of Arabic translations of ancient Greek works, a translation of Ibn Sina’s works on the soul, and a general introduction to philosophy in the Islamic world.