Aristotle’s ousia suffered the same fate it had in the West when it arrived in ancient Iran and the world of Islam. Among all the existing appropriate equivalents, the term “substance” was chosen as its nearest equivalent in western philosophical texts. Similarly, the t
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Aristotle’s ousia suffered the same fate it had in the West when it arrived in ancient Iran and the world of Islam. Among all the existing appropriate equivalents, the term “substance” was chosen as its nearest equivalent in western philosophical texts. Similarly, the term “jawhar”, which is the Arabic for “gawhar” in Persian and a close equivalent for substance, was accepted by all philosophers in the world of Islam. In previous translated works before and after the translation movement in Baghdad’s Dar al-Tarjumah (Translation House), there were some words such as ayn, inniyyat, huwiyyat, and budish which implied almost the true meaning of ousia as intended by Aristotle. This was because this term has been derived from the verb to be and basically means existent, essence, or being; however, jawhar and substance were the ultimate choices of translators. The dominance of this substantialist view, both in the West and in the East, was partly because of the early translations of Aristotle’s works. This paper aims to, firstly, examine the fate of Aristotles’s ousia upon its arrival in Iran and the world of Islam and, then, discuss the relationships between the meanings of the chosen equivalents in the Islamic world with those of their western equivalents.
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