Page:PhilipK.Hitti-SyriaAShortHistory.djvu/166

Rh reading public found at its disposal the major philosophical works of Aristotle and the Neo-Platonic commentators, the chief medical writings of Hippocrates and Galen, the main mathematical compositions of Euclid and the geographical masterpiece of Ptolemy. In all this the Syriac-speakers were the mediators. The Arabians knew no Greek, but the Syrians had been in touch with Greek for over a millennium. For two centuries before the appearance of Islam, Syrian scholars had been translating Greek works into Syriac. The same people who had opened the treasures of Greek science and philosophy to the Persians now busied them- selves in making them available to all who could read Arabic.

All branches of learning shared in this activity. The clergy translated Aristotelian logic and Neo-Platonic philo- sophy for their bearing on theological controversies, as before the Moslem conquest they had put the Septuagint and the Gospels into Syriac at Edessa. Besides philosophy and theology, medicine and astronomy, viewed from the astro- logical standpoint, attracted Syrian attention. Many of the distinguished professors at the Jundi-Shapur academy of medicine and philosophy were Christians using Syriac as a medium of instruction. The dean of the academy, Jurjis ibn-Bakhtishu, was summoned by al-Mansur in 765 to give medical advice ; he became the founder of a family of physicians which for six or seven generations almost monopo- lized the entire court medical practice.

A Christian named Yuhanna ibn-Masawayh supposedly translated for al-Rashid several manuscripts, mainly medical, which the caliph had brought back from raids into Asia Minor. Yuhanna's pupil Hunayn ibn-Ishaq (809-873) stands out as one of the foremost translators of the age. He translated most of the works of Aristotle and Galen into Syriac, which his son and nephew then rendered into Arabic. Hunayn is also said to have translated Hippocrates' medical treatises and Plato's Republic. The Syrians were indifferent to Greek poetry and drama and so were the Arabians. Rh