How is a philosophical tradition created? What role does literary biography play in the
formation of intellectual reception history? Through a detailed analysis of the lives and works
of post-Avicennan philosophers this monograph traces the intellectual history and development
of the Avicennan tradition from the fifth eleventh to the eighth fourteenth century. Section 1
investigates the genres of Arabo-Islamic biobibliographical and prosopographical writings as a
source for the history of Arabic philosophy delineating their literary topoi the construction
of philosophical authority and the relationship of Sunni and Twelver-si¿i Islam to
Aristotelian logic and philosophy. Section 2 presents fourteen discrete biobibliographical
studies with a critical inventory of the works including those written in the neglected
exegetical genres of commentary supercommentary gloss and supergloss of Avicenna's
immediate disciples and the following generations of philosophers who created the Avicennan
philosophical heritage in the Islamicate world.
