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Ibn Wahshiyya
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ibn Wahshiyya (Abu Bakr Ahmed (or Mohammed) ibn Ali ibn al-Wahshiya al-Kaldani or al-Nabati) was an Iraqi Aramean (who are often called "Nabateans" in mediaeval Arabic sources, though they are unrelated to the ancient Nabateans from the area around Petra). He wrote or translated a book called Nabataean Agriculture (Kitab al-falaha al-nabatiya) (c. 904), which was said to be based on ancient Babylonian sources. The book extols Babylonian-Aramean-Syrian civilization against that of the conquering Arabs. It contains valuable information on agriculture and superstitions, and in particular discusses beliefs attributed to the Sabeans that there were people before Adam, that Adam had parents and that he came from India. These ideas were discussed by the Jewish philosophers Judah ben Samuel Halevi and Maimonides, through which they became an influence on the seventeenth century French Millenarian Isaac La Peyrère.
Ibn Wahshiyya is also said to be author of Kitab Shawq al-Mustaham, a work that discusses a number of ancient alphabets and claims to offer a translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics. An edition of the Arabic text with English translation by Joseph Hammer appeared in 1806 and the text was known to Silvestre de Sacy a colleague of Jean-François Champollion.