Coding and Encoding: Towards a New Approach to the Study of Syriac and Arabic Translations of Greek Scientific and Philosophical Texts

This essay presents the ERC project ‘Transmission of Classical Scientific and Philosophical Literature from Greek into Syriac and Arabic’ (HUNAYNNET) based at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The main research question leading the project addresses the contribution of the Syriac tradition in the transfer of Greek scientific literature to the Arabic-speaking world. To fulfill this goal the project is going to provide digital editions of the Syriac and Arabic versions and tools for linguistic corpus-based analysis. The digital Greek–Syriac–Arabic corpus will offer a novel approach for research into the translation techniques and in the history of the transmission of classical Greek literature in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.