American Indian Economic Development

This book contains a new edition and English translation of the oldest commentary on Aristotle written in Arabic and preserved to this day, together with an extensive commentary. It is a compendium on the treatise De generatione et corruptione, written by the Imamite theologian and heresiographer Hasan b. M?s? al-Nawbakht? (fl. ca. 900). To this day, apart from the title of more than forty works and numerous fragments-taken mainly from his magnum opus, the Book of the Doctrines and Religions (Kit?b al-?r?' wa-al-diy?n?t)-only a single treatise of his, the Book of Shî'î Sects (Kitâb firaq al-shî'a), was known to us. The text sheds new light in several ways: firstly, on the the Arabic philosophical tradition, since it was composed during the obscure period between al-Kind? and al-F?r?b? (roughly, the 2 nd half of the 9 th c.); secondly, on the Greek tradition, since the author makes extensive use of Alexander's lost commentary on De generatione; thirdly, on the formative period of sh?'ism, since it helps us to reconstruct how the author borrowed from the Aristotelian tradition the tools necessary to build up a new anthropology compatible with the doctrine of the Occultation which he inaugurated at the time.