translator · reviser · scholar

Hunayn ibn Ishaq حنين بن إسحاق

c. 808–873 also known as Johannitius

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 , Syriac Syriac · reviser · Baghdad attested
c. 840–873 Aphorisms , Greek Arabic · translator · Baghdad attested
c. 845–875 On Simple Drugs , Syriac Arabic · translator · Baghdad probable
c. 847–861 De Materia Medica , Greek Arabic · reviser · Baghdad 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.