A philosophical and scientific analysis of the ninth article of Ibn Sînâ's Kitâbu'l-Hayewân

Aristotle initiated biology as both a theoretical and practical discipline by making living beings the subject of philosophical inquiry and conducting systematic investigations of them. His works History of Animals, Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals were translated into Arabic as a single book under the title Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, therefore introducing Aristotle's biological thought into the Islamic philosophical tradition. Ibn Sīnā composed the eighth section of the Natural Sciences (al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt) in his Kitāb al-Shifāʾ as a kind of commentary on Aristotle's Kitāb al-Ḥayawān. Of the nineteen articles that constitute Ḥayawān, articles 15–19 correspond to Aristotle's On the Generation of Animals. However, from a thematic perspective, the ninth article may also be considered part of this group. At the center of this study lies the ninth article, which contains Ibn Sīnā's views on reproduction and the formation of the embryo. In this context, themes in the ninth article—such as the nature of the male and the female, the respective contributions of each to reproduction, and the stages of embryonic development—are examined in comparison with Aristotle. Within the framework of this thesis, the first three chapters of the ninth article of Ibn Sīnā's Ḥayawān have been translated into Turkish on the basis of Medkūr's 1970 edition, and glossaries to facilitate comprehension ofthe text have also been provided.