Bīrūnī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad, Alberuni's India (v. 1)

(London :  Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.,  1910.)

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  Page xlii  



xlii                                  PREFACE.

Aratus, Plicenomena, with a commentary.                        ^

G-alenus, Protrepticus.

wepl avvdeaews (papiiaKwv tQiv Kara tottovs.

TTepl ffwdeaeus ipapfxaKUv Kara yevrj.

Commentary on the Apophthegms of Hippokrates.

De indole anirnce.

Book of the Proof.
Ptolemy, Almagest.

Geography.

Kitab-almanshurdt.
Pseudo-Kallisthenes, Alexander romance.
Scholia to the Ars grammatica of Dionysius Thrax.
A synchronistic history,  resembling in part that of Johannes
Malalas, in part the Chronicon of Eusebius.    Cf. notes to i.
112, 105.
 

The other analogies which he draws, not taken from
Greek, but from Zoroastrian, Christian, Jewish, Mani-
chsean, and Sufi sources, are not very numerous. He
refers only rarely to Eranian traditions ; cf. Index II.
(Persian traditions and Zoroastrian). Most of the
notes on Christian, Jewish, and Manicheean subjects
may have been taken from the book of Eranshahri (cf.
his own words, i. 6, 7), although he knew Christianity
from personal experience, and probably also from the
communications of his learned friends Abulkhair Al¬
khammar and Abu-Sahl Almasihl, both Christians from
the farther west (cf. Chronologic Orientalischer Volker,
Einleitung, p. xxxii.). The interest he has in Mani's
doctrines and books seems rather strange. We are not
acquainted with the history of the remnants of Mani-
cheeism in those days and countries, but cannot help
thinking that the quotations from Mani's " Book of
Mysteries" and Thesaurus Vivifieationis do not justify
Alberuni's judgment in this direction. He seems to
have seen in them venerable documents of a high
antiquity, instead of the syncretistic ravings of a would-
be prophet.

That he was perfectly right in comparing the Sufi
philosophy—he derives the word from o-oc^ia, i.  33—
  Page xlii