Previously Unpublished Works, Fascicle 5

"And he wrote other books which treat of the healing of animals' bodies, and of stones, and of trees, and of the stone which hath healing properties; and the 'Book of the Ladder' which resembleth his other books of science." — Budge, Alexander, vol. ii, pp. 384-5 Sir E.A. Wallis Budge was a curator at the British Museum who published extensive translations of Syriac and Ethiopic versions of the Alexander Romance..

Other Syriac versions of similar treatises, not now extant, have existed in the past. Thus in the preface to the pseudo-Aristotelian "On Stones" original: "de lapidibus"; a work falsely attributed to Aristotle concerning the properties of gems and minerals (edited by Rose, Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum, New Series xvi, 1875, p. 349) we find the statement: "The great Aristotle, son of Nicomachus and teacher of Alexander the Great, the king and son of Philip the King of the Macedonians, gave this book. And I translate it from the Greek language into the idiom of the Syrians." original: "Hunc librum dedit magnus Aristotiles filius Nichomachi magister Alexandri Magni regis Phylippi regis Macedonum filii. Et ego transfero ipsum ex greco sermone in ydyoma syrorum.". A list of Syriac versions of Aristotle is found in Hottinger’s Bibliotheca Orientalis, ii. 219-41 Johann Heinrich Hottinger was a 17th-century Swiss philologist and theologian..

THE WESTERN ARABIC FORM.

The earliest version of the Secretum Secretorum The Secret of Secrets in Arabic consisted originally of seven (Oxford manuscript Laud Or. 210) or eight "discourses," to which, in all forms now known, a number of additional sections have been added, without any change being made in the prefatory announcement. The "discourses" are of very unequal length; the first, second, and third constitute the main body of the work, the other four or five being identical with the remaining seven of the longer version but split up differently. To this primitive work our manuscripts add certain "gates"—the treatise on Physiognomy the practice of judging a person's character or future from their facial features or body type, the "regimen sanitatis" a regimen of health, typically providing advice on diet, exercise, and lifestyle, and a special discourse on alchemy the medieval forerunner of chemistry, focused on the transmutation of matter and the creation of elixirs and the properties of precious stones. No manuscript follows the division into seven or eight "discourses" it announces, all are in ten, the three additional "gates" making thirteen.

It is in the seven-book form that it was known to Haji Khalfa also known as Katib Chelebi, a celebrated 17th-century Ottoman polymath and bibliographer, Mustafa ibn 'Abd Allah called Katib Chelebi (died 1658), who thus describes it under no. 10202 (I quote the English translation of the Latin version of his encyclopedic list in Fluegel's edition): "The Book of Policy, a book of guidance on the administration of the state. Seven books of politics, which Aristotle composed for Alexander, when the latter earnestly requested of him that he write some things which would be a rule for him, to which he could turn in his absence. They translated the book into Arabic." original Latin: "Kitab el siyasset, liber rectionis de republica administranda. Septem libri politicorum, quos Aristoteles Alexandro composuit, cum hic ab ipso vehementer peteret, ut nonnulla scriberet, quae ei regula essent, ad quam illo absente recurrere potest. Librum Arabice verterunt.". The Secretum is again described under no. 7102 (vol. iii, p. 591): "The Secret of Secrets, a secret of secrets concerning wisdom; the author is Yemeni. The Greek archetype, from which this work was translated in the time of Al-Ma'mun the seventh Abbasid Caliph, known for promoting the translation of Greek scientific and philosophical works into Arabic, has the philosopher as its author, who wrote for Alexander regarding the administration of subject kingdoms and the army." original Latin: "Sirr el asrar, arcanum arcanorum de sapientia, auctor Yemeni. Archetypum graecum, ex quo hoc opus tempore Mamuni conversum est, philosophum auctorem habet, qui in favorem Alexandri de aministrandis regnis subjectis et exercitu scripsit.". Steinschneider (Alfarabi,