Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/54

 view of Hellenistic culture which he had obtained during his war with Syria, and had offered hospitality to the ejected Greek philosophers when Justinian closed the schools at Athens, founded a Zoroastrian school at Junde-Shapur, in Khuzistan, where not only Greek and Syriac works, but also philosophical and scientific writings brought from India, were translated into Pahlawi, or Old Persian, and there the study of medicine taught by Greek and Indian physicians was developed more fully than in the theological atmosphere of the Christian schools, although some of the most distinguished medical teachers in this school were themselves Nestorian Christians. Amongst the alumni of Junde-Shapur were the Arab Hares b. Kalada, who afterwards became famous as a practitioner, and his son Ennadr, cited in the 5th canon of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), an enemy of the Prophet Muhammad who was amongst those defeated at the battle of Badr and was put to death by ‘Ali. Several Indian medical writers are cited by Razes and others, notably Sharak and Qolhoman, whilst the treatise on poisons by the Indian Shanak was, at a later date, translated into Persian by Manka for Yahya b. Khalid the Barmecide and afterwards into Arabic for the ‘Abbasid Khalif al-Ma’mun. Manka, who was medical attendant to Harunu r-Rashid, translated from Sanskrit various medical and other works. Besides the Christian and Zoroastrian schools there was also a pagan school at Harran, of whose foundation we have no further