Before and After Muhammad The First Millennium Refocused

148 | CHAPTER 5

false, but oblique acknowledgment of his influence on Alexandrian scholar-
ship and the Museum.^97 Under the Ptolemies, instruction in philosophy
thrived in that city. The last in a succession of twelve teachers during this
period was Andronicus of Rhodes (mentioned as eleventh Peripatetic schol-
arch by the fifth- century Alexandrian Ammonius, whose account of Aristo-
tle’s philosophy much influenced the Arabs.^98 ) In the story as purveyed by
Fārābī, after the death of Cleopatra the Emperor Augustus

inspected the libraries [in Alexandria] and the [dates of ] production

of the books, and found there manuscripts of Aristotle’s works, copied

in his lifetime and in that of Theophrastus.... He ordered copies to be

made of the books copied in the lifetime of Aristotle and his pupils,

and that the teaching be based on these, disregarding the rest. He ap-

pointed Andronicus to manage this task

and teach philosophy at Rome. With the coming of Christianity, instruction
ceased at Rome^99 while continuing at Alexandria.
By attributing to Augustus the rediscovery of Aristotle’s lost works, Fārābī
and our other sources both sharpen the First Millennium trajectory of Aris-
totelianism, and recall Eusebius on Augustus and Christ. But Fārābī argues
that Islam not Christianity seals the tradition, thus validating his own heri-
tage and bringing us down—according to our reckoning, though not his—
almost to the end of the First Millennium (he died in 948). He alleges that
philosophical teaching in Alexandria was investigated by the “king of the
Christians” and the bishops, who

assembled and took counsel together.... They formed the opinion

that the books on logic were to be taught up to the end of the existen-

tial figures,^100 but not what comes after it, since they thought that

would harm Christianity, while that whose teaching they endorsed

contained [material] that could be called upon for help in the [theo-

logical] defence of their religion. Of public teaching, then, this much

remained, while whatever was examined of the rest remained private,

until Islam came after a long period.

This restriction was, according to other versions of the Alexandria to Bagh-
dad narrative, part of a more general decline of sixth- and seventh- century
Alexandrian teaching in what we already saw, in the work of Sergius of
Reshʿaina, to be the closely interrelated subjects of medicine and logic. A

97 N. J. Richardson, “Aristotle and Hellenistic scholarship,” in Montanari (ed.), Philologie grecque
[5:9], esp. 12–14.
98 Goulet, D PA 1.201 [5:10].
99 I disagree with S. Stroumsa’s notion, “Al- Fārābī and Maimonides on the Christian philosophical
tradition,” Der Islam 68 (1991) 267–68, that Constantinople or Athens is intended.
100 Aristotle [ed. I. Bekker (Berlin 1831; revised second edition O. Gigon, Berlin 1960–87); tr. J.
Barnes (ed.) (Princeton 1984)], Prior analytics 1.7; cf. above, pp. 143–44.