Anna Izdebska

Anna Izdebska holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Warsaw University (Oriental Faculty). She studied Philosophy (magister) with a minor in Classics within the framework of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at the University of Warsaw, as well as Arabic and Islamic studies (BA). She worked at the Warsaw University as a junior researcher during her PhD and she then moved to the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where she is also currently hired part-time as Assistant Professor in Arabic and Islamic Studies. At different stages of her career, she was twice a visiting scholar at Princeton University (Near Eastern Studies & Medieval Studies).

Her research is focused on a transmission of Greek philosophy into the medieval Arabic world. Her PhD and several papers she wrote are devoted to Arabic knowledge and the reception of the Greek Pythagorean tradition. She wrote an entry about Arabic Pythagoras for the Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques (Pythagore dans la tradition arabe et syriaque, vol. VII, Paris 2018, CNRS).

Her current project in the MPIWG, Writing Histories of Greek Philosophy in Arabic, is devoted to the question of constructing the images of history of Greek philosophy among medieval Arabic authors.

Selected Publications

(In press) Tetractys: A Pythagorean terminus technicus in the Process of Translation from Greek into Arabic. Intellectual History of the Islamicate World.

(2019) The Arabic Commentary on the Golden Verses Attributed to Proclus, and Its Neoplatonic Context, Aither. Journal for the Study of Greek and Latin Philosophical Traditions, 6: 18–63 (international issue)

(2016) Man, God and the Apotheosis of Man in Greek and Arabic Commentaries to the Pythagorean Golden Verses. International Journal of Platonic Tradition, 10: 40–64.

(2016) The Pythagorean Metaphysics of Numbers in the Works of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ and al-Shahrastāni. In: A.-B. Renger and A. Stavru (eds.), Pythagorean Knowledge from the Ancient to the Modern World: askêsis—religion—science. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz: 361–374.

(2012) Pitagoreizm: Jedno jako arche w metafizyce, antropologii i polityce [Pythagoreanism: The One as the Arche in Metaphysics, Anthropology, and Politics]. Warsaw: Warsaw University Press, ISBN: 978-83-235-0958-5.