Ḥunayn's Medical Translations In a well known anecdotefrom around the middle of third/ninth-centuryBaghdād, al-Jāḥiẓ tells of an Arab doctor who,explaining why he has no patients, complains thathis name is Asad, not Ṣalībā, Yūḥannā or Bīrā; thathe wears a white cotton garment, not a black silkone; and that his speech is pure Arabic, not that ofthe people of Jundīshāpūr.

This anecdote provides a simple answer to the questionwhich forms the title of this paper. Ḥunayn b.Isḥāq, the master translator into Ara bic,translated more Greek medical works into Syriac thanArabic, be- cause the leading doctors werepredominantly Syrians, mostly hailing fromJundīshāpūr, and Syriac translations were what theywanted. The eminence of the Syrian doctors in earlyʿAbbāsid Baghdād is well recog nised, as also thatthe patrons of Ḥunayn for whom he made his numerousSyriac translations were practising doctors, whereasthe patrons of the Arabic translations made by themaster or his associates were cultivated wealthyofficials or courtiers or, as with the Banū Mūsā,scholars of other disciplines. Ḥunayn's Syriactranslations of Greek medicine were not, assometimes supposed, merely “intermediate” en routeto the Arabic. On the contrary, they were made to beread in Syriac by the people who best appreciatedtheir content, and the Arabic translations were madefrom the Syriac only by Ḥubaysh and ʿĪsā b. Yaḥyā(presumably because they were less comfortabletranslating from Greek). Ḥunayn and his associatesalso occupy, however, an important place in thehistory of Greek philosophy in the Middle East, andwhat is known about their medical translations mayhave implications for our understanding of theirparallel endeavours in the field of philosophy whichhave not yet been fully explored.

In the most important source of our information on themedical translations, the Risāla to ʿAlī b. Yaḥyā, Ḥunayn lists(from a total of a hundred and twenty-nine treatisescorrectly or incorrectly ascribed to Galen)ninety-six which he has translated into Syriac andthirty-five into Arabic. Fifty-three of these Syriacversions were written for six patrons known to havebeen practising physicians , seven for his son Isḥāq(also a physician), and four more for three others.In addition to the eighteen he commissioned fromḤunayn, the celebrated physician Yūḥannā b. Māsawayhalso commissioned three Syriac translations fromḤubaysh, and another leading physician, Bakhtīshūʿb. Jibrīl, commissioned two from Isḥāq.