The commentary of Nicolaus of Damascus on Kitab al-Nabat Attributed to Aristotle

In the history of Islamic science, the first and main work written directly on botany is Kitâb al-Nabât ascribed to Aristotle. However there are some doubts about authorship of Aristotle of this treatise, which survives only due to its Arabic translation dated to the early 10th century. But besides its influence in the history of Islamic science, the book was translated into Latin and Hebrew in the Middle Ages by reason of the importance of its subject and method by which it was treated. On the other hand, various signs demonstrate that the book had been more influential in Europe than in the Islamic world. In spite of its brevity, Kitâb al-Nabât is quite an important text in terms of the place of botany in Peripatetic natural sciences. As it deals with a lot of matters not treated by Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle who wrote on plants. In this way, it enables us to complete in a wider frame our information on Peripatetic botany. The work which consists of two chapters treats firstly Pre-Aristotelian knowledge and theories about plants, and then they are concerned according to the Aristotelian philosophy in a way that we cannot find in other authors. Our first aim in this thesis is to give a Turkish rendering of the work which has not yet been translated into our language. Following that, we aimed at presenting the place and significance of the book in the history of science, as well as interpreting it in the light of the ancient and Islamic sources. We believe that the translation and commentary of the book will fill an important gap in the studies on ancient, Islamic and Medieval botany in our country.