“A Hidden Hapax Legomenon in Avicenna’s Metaphysics: Considerations on the Use of Anniyya and Ayyiyya in the Ilāhiyyāt of the Kitāb al-Šifāʿ”

A critical edition of the masterpiece of Avicenna’s metaphysics – the Science of Divine Things (Ilāhiyyāt) of the Book of the Cure (Kitāb al-Šifā’) – is very much needed in order to assess the metaphysical thought of his author and the extent of his debt towards Aristotle and the Peripatetic tradition. The example discussed in the present contribution regards the title of the very first chapter of the work, in which the term anniyya (“existence”), common to the current printed versions of the Ilāhiyyāt, should arguably be corrected into ayyiyya (“essential quality”). The proposed correction is corroborated by the apparent use of the latter term (equally misreported as anniyya in available editions) in other parts of the Šifā’, with particular regard to the reworking of Porphyry’s Isagoge (Madḫal), and sheds light on Avicenna’s preservation of a instance of Kindian terminology also in a work strongly dependent on Farabian patterns like the Ilāhiyyāt.