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This is the first major study devoted to the early Arabic reception and adaption of the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary Egyptian sage to whom were ascribed numerous works on astrology, alchemy, talismans, medicine, and philosophy. Before the more famous Renaissance European reception of the ancient Greek Hermetica, the Arabic tradition about Hermes and the works under his name had been developing and flourishing for seven hundred years. The legendary Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus was renowned in Roman antiquity as an ancient sage whose teachings were represented in books of philosophy and occult science. The works in his name, written in Greek by Egyptians living under Roman rule, subsequently circulated in many languages and regions of the Roman and Sasanian Persian empires. After the rise of Arabic as a prestigious language of scholarship in the eighth century, accounts of Hermes identity and Hermetic texts were translated into Arabic along with the hundreds of other works translated from Greek, Middle Persian, and other literary languages of antiquity. Hermetica were in fact among the earliest translations into Arabic, appearing already in the eighth century. This book explains the origins of the Arabic myth of Hermes Trismegistus, its sources, the reasons for its peculiar character, and its varied significance for the traditions of Hermetica in Asia and northern Africa as well as Europe. It shows who pre-modern Arabic scholars thought Hermes was and how they came to that view.
- Sales Rank: #2066798 in eBooks
- Published on: 2009-08-26
- Released on: 2009-08-26
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"I suggest that his work has the great potential to become a classical reference book for both late antiquity and the study of Hermetism. --Journal of Semitic Studies
"Kevin van Bladel addresses a significant gap in our knowledge. The author should be commended for such a competent artisanship.... The author has done a great service to the profession by clearing the field for himself and for other scholars so that they can build on a solid groundwork."--Hayrettin Yucesoy, Journal of World History
"A veritable treasure trove of information, well-indexed and with an extensive bibliography. It should thus be indispensable on the shelves of anyone interested in Hermes Trismegistus, Late Antiquity, Sasanian Iran, and early Arabic translations and intellectual life. No small feat!"--Christian H. Bull, Numen
"A wonderfully solid historical masterpiece that greatly contributes to our understanding of certain strands of intellectual transmission in the late antique Near East, as well as disabuses us of many a myth about the presence of Hermes and hermeticism in classical Islamic learned culture." --The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
"Kevin van Bladel has produced an admirable study of the Arabic Hermetic tradition, fleshing out in considerable detail the evolution of Hermes' image, his identification with Qur'anic prophet Idris as well as the forces driving this transformation, and his connections, real, imagined, and still controversial, with the Harranians, the last organized group of astrolators to continue functioning within Islamic civilization.... This brief recap does not do justice to the many separate and meticulous investigations that van Bladel has carried out and pieced together in order to provide this account.... this is a very good book, all the more impressive as it is the product of a young scholar."-- Y. Tzvi Langermann, Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews
About the Author
Kevin van Bladel is Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Southern California.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
How a fictitious pagan teacher became an Islamic prophet
By DAJ
It's hard to know how to rate an academic book's accuracy when I'm not familiar with the previous work on the subject. A lot of what Van Bladel is doing, though, seems to be entirely new. His goal is to show how the elements of the Islamic legends about Hermes Trismegistus originated. To do that, he traces how texts from multiple cultures about Hermes copied from and influenced each other, an especially difficult task because some of the most important texts are lost today.
Van Bladel first describes the origins of Hermeticism in Roman Egypt, as well as the way early Islamic culture picked up texts and ideas from Greco-Roman and Persian cultures. He then looks at two avenues that traditions about Hermes Trismegistus took to enter Islamic culture. One is Sasanian Persia, into which some of the Greco-Roman ideas about Hermes had filtered before the Islamic conquest. (In Greco-Roman tradition, Egypt and Persia had competing claims to be the oldest culture and greatest source of knowledge, so it's interesting to see the Persians themselves buy into that tradition and twist stories of Egyptian knowledge to assert Persia's superiority.) The other avenue was the "Sabians" of the city of Harran in northern Syria, who were pagans but came to be treated as "people of the book" under Islamic rule by exploiting a confusing reference in the Quran and claimed Hermes Trismegistus as their prophet. Their history and culture is very murky and has given rise to a lot of scholarly speculation, which Van Bladel carefully examines and largely debunks. The only certain Harranian contribution to the Islamic tradition of Hermes is the idea that he was a prophet.
In the next two chapters the tracing of texts gets really dense and detailed. A lost 9th-century book called The Thousands by Abu Ma'shar pulled together references to Hermes in Christian chronologies with the Persian and Harranian tradition to produce an account of three Hermeses, each living in different times and places. Most Arabic sources from then on adopted this interpretation of Hermes. They eventually came to regard the first Hermes as synonymous with the prophet Idris, the Islamic version of Enoch, and the creator of an ancient religion that paralleled Islam. A dizzying variety of works were attributed to Hermes, including astrological, alchemical, and magical texts and collections of wise sayings that were actually taken from sources as far afield as India.
Van Bladel doesn't much go beyond the 13th century, by which time the traditions about Hermes seem to have been fixed, and he says little about what legacy they might have had afterwards. He also doesn't analyze the alchemical and magical traditions about Hermes, though he implies that they carried on with little modification from late antiquity, when magical texts and bits of esoteric knowledge were already attributed to the sage. These problems are outweighed by the pioneering nature of the book and the monumental work that must have gone into it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting, in-depth study on a relatively unknown subject
By Lone Adventurer
One source of knowledge which has often been described as part of the 'occult' sciences is hermeticism. Hermeticism is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs attributed to the mythic character known to us as 'Hermes Trismegistos'
Much of what the medieval West knew of Hermes and Hermeticism came to it through The Islamic world. This book discusses how the figure of Hermes was adopted and adapted by the early Muslim Arabs, and how his teachings were accepted and he came to be viewed as a true prophet.
The Arabic hermetic works claimed to explain the secrets of the universe, laws governing nature and how to make elixirs which could prolong one's life. Therefore, they were much sought after and collected in great quantities throughout the vast libraries of the Islamic world.
Indeed, the hermetic tradition was a living one until only comparatively recently, with the onset of colonialism.
All in all, a very interesting book on a subject that deserves to be much more widely known.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
An extremely worthwile study.
By Kevin
I had this book on my radar for months before it finally reached print. The Historical reception of the the Hermetic Corpus and the history of Hermes as patron of Science, Medicine, Astrology and Magic is a bit of an obsession of mine. One of the key dark areas in the study of the life and times of Hermes is just how it was that a Hellenistic hybrid of an ancient Egytptian deity became such a key figure in the heart and literature of the Islamic Golden age. I must say that I was hoping for a bit more when I first cracked open the book and read the introduction, that Van Bladel is planning another, follow-up work called "The Arabic Hermetica," that will cover more of the actual Arabic texts that bear Hermes name. Kevin sir, if you happen to read this, I am eagerly awaiting your follow-up study!
That being said however, this book is an essential read for anyone looking to get a better grasp on the historic transmission of the character of Hermes into first Persian, and later Islamic culture. This book could be of interest to amateurs and scholars alike; it offers insight into the historical developments of Medicine, Astronomy,Mathematics and Magic within the Arabic Golden age. I came into the study of Hermes first in the writings of Dame Frances Yates in her "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition," the legacy of the Arabic Hermes upon the rise of Renaissance though in 15th century Europe has been woefully neglected and in this way, Kevin Van Bladel is fulfilling a very serious need.
There are a number of reasons why I would recommend this book. It is a penetrating study of a fascinating and prolific subject, it breaks down many of the assumptions fostered upon the historical reception of Hermes, and it offers a skeptical look at at least one of the most widely repeated and little questioned segments of the Hermetic timeline, the Sabbeans of Harran. Van Bladel breaks down much of the quoted literature regarding these fabled mystics and shows several instances where the claims of their "Hermetic/Pagan lineage" have been grossly over-estimated.
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