oa Van Aken tot Bagdad

This article discusses a unique chapter of the classical tradition: the multilingual reception of the Organon of Aristotle during the early Middle Ages. In doing so, it fills two scholarly gaps. First, it focuses attention on the early Middle Ages as a crucial but neglected phase of the classical tradition, when ancient texts were studied in Latin, Greek and Arabic. Secondly, it elucidates the special case of the simultaneous reception of the Organon in these three language realms. In the eighth and ninth century, intellectuals living in cities as far apart as Aachen and Baghdad studied the Organon at the same time in Latin and Arabic, while in Constantinople it was read in the original Greek. No other classical text was read by such a geographically widespread audience. This article aims to explain how a classical corpus that is now only studied by specialists gained such popularity in both Europe and the Middle East.