Resumen de The Cows and the Bees: Arabic Sources and Parallels for Pseudo-Plato's "Liber vaccae (Kitab al-Nawamis)"
The Arabic original of te ninth-century Kitab al-Nawamis has not been discovered, save for three incomplete chapters. We have access to a fuller version only through a Latin translation, often known as the "Liber vaccae", a title derived from its notorious experiments which involve the gruesome slaughter and mutilation of a cow to magically produce a rational animal or bees. Recent research on the "Liber vaccae" has focused mostly on its reception in medieval and early modern Europe. By contrast, the present article explores the Indo-Arabic tradition to which "Kitab al-Nawamis" belongs, as a re-orientation of the "Liber vaccae" established on two levels: textual and theoretical. Section I, on 'Texts and Practices', introduces 'Uyun al-haqa'iq' of Abu al-Qasim al-'Iraqi, a text on magical practices which contains 26 chapter that correspond to sections in the "Liber vaccae", affording us a glance into the Arabic reception of "Kitab al-Nawamis" and bringing us closer to the Arabic original. The textual connection is established further by highlighting parallels between the experiments of the "Liber vaccae / Kitab al-Nawamis" and other texts on natural magic, namely "Ghayat al-hakim" of Maslama al-Qurtubi and "Kitab al-Sumum" by Ibn Wahshiyya. Section II investigates the theoretical bases of the "Liber vaccae / Kitab al-Nawamis", by associating its content with the theories of spontaneous and artificial generation in "Kitab al-Tajmi" attribiuted to Jabir ibn Hayyan, "Ghayat al-hakim", "Kitab al-Sumum" and, finally, another work by Ibn Wahshiyya, "al-Filaha al-nabatiyya". Jabir's and Qurtubi's works have been studied in relation to the "Liber vaccae" by David Pingree, Maaike Van der Lugt, Sophie Page and William Newman; their findings are re-evaluated here in light of the texts of Ibn Wahshiyya and al-Iraqi.
