FP7 - ERC - Advanced grant
The present project pursues three main objectives.
(1) A complete inventory of the manuscripts preserving Avicenna’s Ilāhiyyāt, through the systematic inspection of the catalogues of Arabic collections in libraries worldwide; the obtainment of copies of the censed manuscripts; and their description.
(2) To prepare an on-line critical edition of the Arabic text of the Ilāhiyyāt, divided in ten parts corresponding to the ten treatises of the work, with apparatus of variants, apparatus of sources, and apparatus of loci paralleli; to connect the edition with an English translation, based on the wording of the new critical edition, and with the Latin Medieval translation, according to its already existing critical edition; to provide a general introduction to the work and specific doctrinal introductions to the single treatises, with detailed overviews of their main doctrines and their function in the overall work, and a running commentary, with all the relevant explanatory information; to append complete indexes and lexica. Techniques of digital humanities will consent the creation and interplay of the different elements envisaged.
(3) A web platform, consisting of four main elements: i) a codicological database, containing all the relevant information and the key images of the manuscripts brought to light and used in the project; ii) the edition of the text and its complements (translations, commentary, lexica etc.); iii) a bibliographical archive of editions, translations, and studies of Avicenna’s philosophy, with particular regard to his metaphysics; iv) a newsletter for the sharing of information among scholars of Avicenna’s thought worldwide. Technology will provide instruments to store information on and images of manuscripts into the database; to record the collation of the testimonia of the work, and to convert the results of the collation into the critical apparatus; to link the Arabic text with its various complements (apparatuses, translations, commentary, indices, lexica); and to compile indices and lexica.