The Evolution of Logical Terminology in Medieval Persian Philosophy: A Linguistic Interplay

Medieval logic plays a very significant role in the history of logic. However, medieval logic is not simply limited to Western medieval logic. The Eastern tradition, especially the one that was flourishing in the Islamic world, largely contributed to this field, too. One important fact about the Eastern tradition is the role that Arabic (as a lingua franca) played in the Islamic world. For instance, many medieval Persian philosophers have written their treatises both in Arabic and their own vernacular. Nevertheless, the interplay between these two languages, unlike its Western counterpart, i.e., the interplay between Latin and European vernaculars, has not been studied extensively. The candidate will exactly focus on this subject and pay particular attention to the different strategies adopted by Avicenna (in his Persian work Dānešnāme-ye ʿAlāʾī) and Suhrawardi (in his Persian treatises such as Partaw Nama) in introducing new logical terms to their vernacular that were (up until then) only available in Arabic. This will (most probably) reveal very important issues regarding the evolution of logic through its linguistic metamorphosis in the interplay between the lingua franca and the vernacular.