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Dr. Emily Cottrell's current research focuses on an eleventh-century Egyptian book, written in Arabic at the Fatimid (Shi'i) court by Mubashshir ibn Fatik during the first half of the eleventh century. At first glance a collection of wise sayings, as well as a dictionary of philosophers’ biographies, Mubashshir's Choicest Maxims adds the prophets of Antiquity to the famous Greek philosophers and physicians. Translated into Spanish under the title of Bocados de Oro and from there on, into Latin [the anonymous Liber Philosophorum Moralium Antiquorum], Provençal, Old French [Guillaume de Tignonville’s Les dictz moraulx des Philosophes], Old English [Stephen Scrope’s Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers], the book was a wide success of Mediaeval literature. It influenced an early version of the Alexander novel which was to remain the theoretical model of political philosophy until Machiavelli.

The methodology she attempts to follow is an archaeology of the text which consists in: 1) evaluating within the wide corpus of translated literature what are the materials which deserve to be studied in priority and have left some traces in Mubashshir’s compendium; 2) within Mubashshir’s chapters, distinguishing layers of texts according to style/vocabulary/literary effects; 3) looking for parallels in Greek and Latin literatures and only afterwards in Syriac and Pehlevi literature since these remain far less studied and of less interest for a wider community of scholars; 4) try to give a possible date of composition and of transmission to the different layers. When sources and parallels can be discovered, the critical edition is facilitated by the identification of the manuscripts which have preserved correct transliterations of the foreign names: these should be closest to the original translations.

This study is part of a wider evaluation of the Greek sources available to Arab and Persian scholars during the golden age of philosophical thinking in Islam (9th-13th c.). A better appreciation of the intellectual activity in the different centres of the Islamic empire (Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo) remains a desideratum and a better understanding of the Graeco-Arabica networks of texts will bring light to our knowledge of the transmission and the circulation of texts in the Medieval Mediterranean world. Building on materials discovered and analyzed within her PhD at EPHE [5th section,] "Le Kitab Nuzhat al-arwah wa rawdat al-afrah de Shams al-Din al-Shahrazuri: composition et sources," Paris, December 2004), she studies in particular the so-called Arabic ‘doxographies’, a general term given to catalogues of heresies, histories of philosophy, and genuine philosophical doxographies (i.e. catalogues of scientific theories according to the early philosophers).

Cottrell's interests stretches from the history of philosophy and religions in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (including "philosophical religions" and "religious philosophy", such as Gnosis, Hermetism and Sufism) to other fields of specialized literature belonging to the large corpus of ancient literature (Greek, Syriac, Pehlevi, Latin) translated into Arabic. In addition to an important scientific literature (philosophy, medicine, pharmacology, astronomy, geography, etc.), wise sayings and epistolary novels show the importance of the Greek paideia literature in the Arabic-speaking courts.

Selected Publications

• « Mandaean Connections in the Chapters Adam and Seth of Shams al-Dīn al-Shahrazūrī’s   Promenade of the Souls », ARAM conference: the Mandaeans, University of Oxford, 9-11 august 2009 (in press).
• « Les filiations de la Tatimmat Siwân al-hikma (IXème – XIIème siècle) : une géographie intellectuelle de l’Orient abbasside », international conference of the SIEPM « Universality of reason. Plurality of philosophies in the Middle Ages », Palermo, 16-22 september 2007 (in press).  
• « La vie de Pythagore par Porphyre, du grec en arabe », international conference on « The Translated Manuscripts», Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria, Egypt), 28 may – 2 june 2007 (in press).
• Entries for the Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, Springer, forthcoming (ed. H. Lagerlund): « Abū Sulaymān al-Sijist ânî », « Abū hayyān al-Tawhîdî », « Mubashshir ibn Fātik »  ; « al-Shahrast ânî » ; « al-Shahrazûrî ».
• « L’Autobiographie de Zoroastre », in M. –A. Amir-Moezzi, J.- D. Dubois (éd.), Pensée grecque et sagesse d'orient. Mélanges Michel Tardieu, Brepols, 2010.
• « From Baghdad and Rayy to Siwas and Tabriz, through Khorasan : Reading the Classics in the 12th and 13th century », international conference on Baghdad, city of Peace, Istanbul (Theological Faculty of the Marmara University), 4-6 november 2008 (in press).
• « Notes sur quelques-uns des témoignages médiévaux relatifs à l’Histoire philosophique de Porphyre », in W. Raven et A. Akasoy (éd.), Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages. Studies in Text, Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans Daiber, Brill: Leiden, 2008, p. 523-555.
• « L’Anonyme d’Oxford (Manuscrit Bodleian Marsh 539) : Bibliothèque ou commentaire ? », in C. D’Ancona éd., The Libraries of the Neoplatonists Brill (Philosophie Antiqua 107): Leiden 2007, p. 415-441.
• « Shams al-Dîn al-Shahrazûrî et les manuscrits de La Promenade des Âmes et le Jardin des Réjouissances : Histoire des Philosophes (Nuzhat al-’Arwâh wa-Rawdat al-’Afrâh fî Ta’rîkh al-Hukamâ’) », Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales LVI (2004-2005), p. 225-260.