Ibn Sı̄nā and conflict in logic

During the 1020s Ibn Sı̄nā wrote a commentary in Arabic on the logical works of Aristotle, as part of his encyclopedia Al-Šifā’ (The Cure). The commentary runs to some 2180 pages in the recent Cairo edition; this figure includes his commentary Madk ̄ al on Porphyry’s Eisagōgē, which he counted as an introduction to Aristotle’s work. Apart from the Madk ̄ al which was translated into Latin in the 12th century, and the section of Qiyās dealing with propositional logic, barely any of Ibn Sı̄nā’s commentary has been translated into any western language. Ibn Sı̄nā refers to Aristotle’s texts as ‘The First Teaching’ (as in [2.5.7], [2.5.9] below). Their first five books are the subjects of the second to sixth volumes of the Šifā’ respectively. After Madk ̄ al which comments on the Eisagōgē, there comeMaqūlāt (onAristotle’sCategories), cIbāra (on Perı̀ Hermēneı́as), Qiyās (on Prior Analytics), Burhān (on Posterior Analytics) and Jadal (on Topics). Ibn Sı̄nā also commented on the Sophistical Refutations, Rhetoric and Poetics, but we won’t use these commentaries. We will cite two later works of Ibn Sı̄nā: the Easterners and the ’Išārāt.