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Domestic and Wild Animals – Shifting Constellations
Abstract
Aristotle’s initial approach toward many animal species that he discusses in detail in his zoological works is often a diairetical dichotomy by dividing them at first into each a wild and a tame(able) or domesticated variant. A general rule on this as well as on possible tameability is given at the beginning of the History of Animals (488a), according to which an animal species’s being found in a tame variant also implies the existence of a wild variant (but not vice versa). This paper will look at the afterlife of this peculiar Aristotelian division as found with some selected medieval Arabic zoographical writers. For in some of them, such as in al-Waṭwāṭ’s (d. 1318 CE) Mabāhij al-fikar, this distinction is even employed for ordering animals within the text, quasi as an overall taxonomical approach, by which it gets far more importance than originally in Aristotle. Other authors just apply this bifurcal distinction within the discussion of certain animal species, which are grouped according to different taxonomical criteria. Yet even in this case, there is a deviation from Aristotle by either relying on a different list of species that are subject to this division, or by considering certain species as domesticated only, which goes against the above Aristotelian rule. In any case, and even though this is not made explicit, judging a certain animal species to be tame or wild tacitly implies a human point of view. It is the human who, by this division, decides which animal species are to be considered as included in a certain group of animals surrounding man, and which are not. Thus, the paper also wants to look for changes within these groups of animals that surround man in his daily life according to medieval Arabic authors from different places and times and, should such a shift exist, find possible explanations for it.
Discipline
Philosophy
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
None