Is??q Ibn H?unayn, Ab? Ya‘q?b

(d. Baghdad, 910 or 911)

medicine, scientific translation.

The son of H?unayn ibn Is??q, and like him a physician, Is??q was trained under his father’s supervision in the Greek science and the discipline of translation. A Nestorian Christian from al-H??ra (Iraq) and probably of Arab descent, his first language was Syriac, but he knew Greek and al-Qift?? considered his Arabic to be superior to that of his father,¹ who, although bilingual, preferred to write in Syriac. Is??q’s brother, D?w?d ibn H?unayn, was a physician. Of his two sons, D?w?d ibn Is??q became a translator and H?unayn ibn Is??q ibn H?unayn a physician.

Is??q is associated with the translation movement in Baghdad, which continued to flourish after the decline of the academy founded by the Caliph al-Ma’m?n for the purposes of scientific translation. Both Ish?q and his father were court physicians; Ish?q found special favor with the caliphs al-Mu’tamid (who reigned from 870 to 892) and al-My’tamid (892-902) and with the latter’s vizier, Qasim IBN ‘Ubaydall?h. He is sometimes connected with the group of scholars who met with the Shi‘ite theologian al-H?asan ibn al-Nawbakht, and al-Bayhaq? is among those who claim he converted to Islam.²

Is??q’s original works are few. His books On Simple Medicines and Outline of Medicine are not extant. His History of Physicians, which does survive, is based, as Ish?q indicates on the work of the same name by John Philoponus. Ishaq supplements the original author’s list with the names of the philosophers who lived during the lifetime of each physician, adding very little chronological matter. The account of medical practitioners is not continued beyond Philoponus’time. The epitome of Aristotle’s De Anima, although attributed to Ishaq, is unlikely to be his.³

Is?aq’s most notable contributions are his translations from Greek and Syriac. Here his work is associated with his first cousin Hubaysh ibn al-H?asan al-A’s?am and with ’?s? ibn Ya?y? (neither of whom knew Greek), but especially with his father, with whom he translated medical works, and with Th?bit ibn Qurra, who independently revised several of Is??q’s translations, particularly those of matermatical treatises. H?unayn credits Is??q with the translation of several of Galen’s books, mostly into Arabic but also into Syriac; he translated epitomes of Galenic works as well.⁴

Among Is??q’s translations of philosophical works are Galen’s The Number of the Syllogisms and On Demonstration, books XII-XV; three books of the epitome of Plato’s Timaeus, and the Sophist (with the commentary by Olympiodorus). He translated into Arabic Aristole’s Categories, On Interpretation, Physics, On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul, book ? and other parts of the Metaphysics (with Themistius’ commentary on book ?), Nicomachean Ethics and perhaps On Sophistical Refutations, Rhetoric, and Poetics. His Syriac translations include part of the Prior Analytics, all of the Posterior Analytics, and the Topics (with Ammonius’ commentary on books I-IV and the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias on the remainder, with the exception of the last two chapters of book VIII). Other translations are Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On the Intellect; Nicholas of Damascus’ On Plant (revised by Th?bit ibn Qurra); and Nemesius of Emesa’s On the Nature of Man (Kit?b al-Abw?b ?al? Ra?y al-H?ukam?? wa?l-fal?sifa), which is not a work by Gregory of Nyssa as is sometimes stated.

Of special consequence are Is?q’s mathematical translations: Euclid’s Elements, Optics, and Data; Ptolemy’s Almagest; Archimedes’ On the Sphere and the Cylinder; Menelaus’ Spherics; and works by Autolycus and Hypicles. The Elements, Optics. and Almagest were revised and presumably improved mathematically by Th?bit ibn Qurra. The influence of the several versions and recensions of the Arabic Elements and Almagest is a basic and virtually unstudied problem in the history of Islamic mathematics and astronomy. Because so few texts have been established, the sorting out of separate traditions is not yet possible.

NOTES

1. Ibn al-Qift?i, p.80.

2. ’Al? ibn Zayd al-Bayhaq?, p.5.

3. See M. S. Hasan, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1956), p. 57; R. Walzer, in Oriens, 6 (1953), 126; and R. M. Frank, in Cahiers de Byrsa, 8 (1958-1959), 231 ff. The text is in A. F. al-Ahw?n?, pp. 125-175.

4. On the question of attribution for the medical translations, see the articles on H?unayn ibn Is??q listed in the bibliography.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For information on Is??q’s MSS, see the works by C. Brockelmann and F. Sezginm (listed below); see also H. Suter, “Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke,” in Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematik, 10 (1900); and “Nachtrage und Berichtigungen,” ibid., 14 (1902); cf. H. J. P. Renaud,”Additions et corrections a Suter, ’Die Mathematiker...,’"Lsis, 17 (1932), 166-183; and M. Krause, “Stambuler Handschriften islamischen Methematiker,” in Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik, Sec. B. Studien, 3 (1936), 437-532.

Works by Is??q are in F. Rosenthal, ed. and translator, “Is??q b. H?unayn‘s ’Ta‘r?kh al-At?ibb?’,” in Oriens, 7 (1954) 55-80; and A. F. al-Ahw?ni, Talkhis? Kit?b al-Nafs l’Ibn Rushd (Cairo, 1950).

II. Translations. Is??q’s translations of Galen’s works are bound up with those of H?unayn ibn Is??q. For the Arabic versions of Galen’s medical books, see the bibliography in G. Strohmaier,”H?unayn b. Ishak,” in B. Lewis et al., eds., Encylopaedia of Islam, new ed. (LeidenLondon, in press); cf.”Dj?l?n?s,” ibid. The translations of Galen’s mathematical works and the work of Plato are in “Galeni compendium, Timaei Platonis,” in P. Kraus and R. Walzer, eds., Plato Arabus, vol. I (London, 1951). The Arabic translations of the Greek physicians are to be included in the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum: Supplementum Orientale (in press). For Is??q’s translations of Aristotle, see F. E. Peeters, Aristoteles Arabus: The Oriental Translations and Commentaries of the Aristotelian Corpus (Leiden, 1968).

For the trans. of Nicholas of Damascus’ On Plants, see A. J. Arberry,” An Early Arabic Tanslation From the Greek,” in Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts (Cairo University), 1 (1933), 48 ff.; 2 (1934), 72 ff.; and R. P. Bouyges,” Sur le de Plantis d’Aristote-Nicolas à propos d’un manuscrit arabe de Constantinople,” in Mélanges de la Faculté orientale, Université St.-Joseph, 9 (1924), 71 ff. Is??q’s trans. of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ work is in J. Finnegan, “Texte arabe de ’peri nou d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise,’ ibid., 33 (1956), 157 ff.

III. Secondary Literature. Medieval biobibliographies are included in ’Alib. Zayd al-Bayhaqi, Tatimmat S?iw?n al-H?ikma, M. Shafi’, ed. (Lahore, 1935); Ibn Juljul, T?abaq?t al-At?ibb?’ wa’l-H?ukam?’, F. Sayyid, ed. (Cairo, 1955); Ibn Khallik?n, Wafay?t al-A’y?n, F. Wüstenfeld, ed., 2 vols. (Göttingen, 1835-1843), English trans. by MacGuckin de Slane as Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary4 vols. (Paris, 1842-1871); Ibn al-Nad?m, Al-Fihrist, G. Flügel, ed., 2 vols (Leipzig, 1871-1872), English trans. by B. Dodge as The Fihrist of al-Nadim, 2 vols. (New York, 1970); Ibn al-Qift??, Ta’rikh al H?ukam?’, J. Lippert, ed. (Leipzig, 1903); S?‘id al-Andalus?, T?abaq?t al-Umam, L. Cheikho, ed. (Beirut, 1912), French trans. by R. Blachère as Livre des Catégories des Nations (Paris, 1935); and Ibn Ab? Us?aybi‘a, ‘Uyn al-Anba’ fi Tabaq?t al-Atibb?’, A. Müller, ed., 2 vols. (Cairo-Königsberg, 1882-1884). see also three works by Barhebraeus: Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, J. B. Abbeloos and T. J. Lamy, eds. (Louvain, 1872-1877); Chronicon Syriacum, P. Bedjan, ed. (Paris, 1890), Latin trans. by P. J. Bruns and G. Kirsch (Leipzig, 1789); and Ta’rikh Mukhtasar al-Duwal, A. S?lh?n?, ed. (Beirut, 1890).

Modern biobibliographies are in A. Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur (Bonn, 1922); C. BrockelMann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, 2 vols. and 3 suppl. vols. (Leiden, 1937-1949); G. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen-arabischen Literatur, 5 vols. (Rome, 1944-1953); G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vols. (Baltimore, 1927-1928); F. Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. I (Leiden, 1967); M. Ullmann, “Die medizin im Islam,” in B. Spuler, ed., Handbuch der Orientalistik (Leiden, 1970), sec. 1, suppl. vol. VI, 119, 128;and the article on Ish?q in T. Houtsma et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, 4 vols. (Leiden-London, 1913-1938), and in new ed. (in press).

Literature on the translations is in M. Steinschneider, Die arabischen ?bersetzungen aus den Griechischen (Graz, 1960), repr.: G. Bergsträsser, Hunain b. Ishâq u. seine Schule (Leiden, 1913); and “Hunain über die syrischen und arabischen Galenübersetzungen,” in Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 17 (1925); M. Meyerhof, “New Light on Hunain b. Ish?q and his Period,” in Isis, 8 (1926), 685-724; J. Kollesch, “Das ’Corpus medicorum graecorum’—Konzeption und Durchfuhrung,” in Medizinhistorisches Journal, 3 (1968), 68-73; M. Plessner, “Diskussion über das ‘Corpus Medicorum, Graecorum ’speziell das ‘Supplementum Orientale.’ Einleitendes referat,” in Proceedings. International Congress of the History of Medicine, 19 (1966), 238-248; F. Rosenthal, “On the Knowledge of Plato’s Philosophy in the Islamic World,” in Islamic Culture, 14 (1940), 387 ff. (cf. “Afl?t?n,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed. [in press]); H. Gätje, “Studien zur Überlieferung der aristotelischen Psychologie im Islam,” in Annales Universitatis saraviensis, 11 (1917); J. Murdoch, “Euclid: Transmission of the Elements,” in C. C. Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, IV (New York, 1971), 437-459; M. Clagett, Archimedes in the Middle Ages (Madison, 1964), I, “The Arabo-Latin Tradition”; and the Ptolemy article in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed. (in press).

For additional information, see A. Badawi, La transmission de la philosophie grecque au monde arabe (Paris, 1968); F. E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs (New York, 1968); and F. Rosenthal, Das Fortleben der Antike im mittelalterlichen Islam (Zurich-Stuttgart, 1965).

Nabil Shehaby