# Hunayn ibn Ishaq

- id: hunayn-ibn-ishaq
- name in original script: حنين بن إسحاق
- also known as: Johannitius
- dates: c. 808–873
- roles: translator, reviser, scholar

The greatest of the Baghdad translators: an Arab Christian of the Church of the East, born in al-Hira, who catalogued 129 works of Galen and translated about a hundred of them into Syriac or Arabic himself. He hunted manuscripts across Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, graded earlier translations like an examiner, and served al-Mutawakkil as court physician. Some traditions place his death in 877. His paymasters were mostly private patrons, against the later legend that a caliphal House of Wisdom employed him.

## Crossings

- c. 840–873: On Simple Drugs into Syriac (reviser) [attested]
- c. 840–873: Aphorisms into Arabic (translator) [attested]
- c. 845–875: On Simple Drugs into Arabic (translator) [probable]
- c. 847–861: De Materia Medica into Arabic (reviser) [attested]

## Sources

- Strohmaier, Gotthard (1971). Hunayn b. Ishak al-Ibadi.
- Hunayn ibn Ishaq (856). Risala on the Galen translations made by him and his school.
- Gutas, Dimitri (1998). Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society.