Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/57

 favourite manuals amongst the Syriac speaking students of logic. Hoffman's De Hermeneuticis apud Syros (Leipzic, 1873) gives the text of the commentary on the Hermeneutica followed by a Latin translation. The method employed here and in all Syriac commentaries is to take a short passage, often no more than a few words, of the Text of Aristotle translated into Syriac and then give an explanation of the meaning sometimes extending to several pages, sometimes only a brief remark, according to the difficulty of the text, very much as if a teacher were reading aloud and explaining passages by passage as he read. This became the usual method of commenting and was afterwards copied by the Muslims in their commentaries on the Qur’an. The commentary on the Isagoge has been published by Baumstark (Aristotles bei den Syrern, Leipzic, 1900), and that on the Analytica Priora by the great Louvain scholar Prof. Hoonacker in the Journal Asiatique for July-August, 1900.

The greatest of the Monophysite scholars was Sergius of Ras al-‘Ayn (d. 536), who was both a translator and the author of original treatises on philosophy, medicine, and astronomy. His medical work was his chief interest and he left a permanent mark as a translator into Syriac of a considerable part of Galen. He spent some time in Alexandria where he perfected himself in a knowledge of Greek and learned chemistry and medicine in the Alexandrian medical school then just beginning its career. Some