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The
Role of Christian Assyrians and Arabs in
Arab Islamic Civilization in the First
Abbasid Era:
The Translation Movement and its Impact
Dr.
Adnan Mussallam
Introduction
The
First Abbasid Era-from the year in which
the Abbasid dynasty was established on
the remains of the Umayyads, 123
Hijra/749 A.D. to 232 Hijra/847 A.D. at
the end of which the Abbasid Caliph
Al-Mutawakkel had succeeded to the
caliphate—merits study not only because
it is the era of language, syntax,
philology, criticism, poetry and prose
pioneers (1). This era in all its
positive and negative characteristics
incarnates the Arab intellectual
openness toward different civilizations.
The translation movement from Sanscrit,
Persian, Syriac and Greek in the First
Abbasid Era and subsequent eras is
regarded as the most profound and most
expansive cultural movement in the
world. The movement collected the
greatest achievements of preceding
civilizations and translated them into
one language, Arabic; it digested them
and created out of them one universal
civilization, namely the Arab Islamic
civilization (2).
Some may
ask about the worth of interest in the
history of that era. Is it not better
for the Palestinians to forget their
past and turn toward building a better
future? Here I would like to join my
voice to that of an Arab writer who
says, “The lively nation cannot deny its
roots or ignore its past because its
present is a continuation of its
development and an expansion of its
civilization and an affirmation of its
originality” (3).
We do
not call for total immersion in the
past, nor do we call for rebellion
against the past. We cannot resort to
history just for remembrance or for
weeping over the relics of past
generations. We approach the past to
learn important lessons from it: to
learn about the elements of renewed
originality, about growth and
development that extend to the present
and the future, through careful study
and objective methodology that shun
improvisation, rhetoric, emotional
reaction and superficial exaggeration
(4).
In the
following lines I will mention the
formation of the Arab Islamic
civilization and the melting of other
civilizations in it, including the
Hindu, Persian and Hellenistic
civilizations. I will examine the
Assyrian translation period between the
5th and 7th
centuries A.D. and its impact on the
First Abbasid Era. Finally, I will
clarify the role of Christians in the
translation movement during the First
Abbasid Era. My hypotheses will be put
forward in a simple manner so that they
can be read by all readers even those
with little or no knowledge of the
subject.
The
Formation of the Arab Islamic
Civilization:
The
Melting of Different Civilizations
Like any
other civilization, the Arab-Islamic
civilization was the cumulative fruit of
other civilizations that came before it.
“The current civilization is usually the
culmination or selection of previous
civilizations with new distinctive
elements. It is a give-and-take process
and a joint result of old and new
elements, with the old and the new
directing and guiding each other and at
the same time obscuring and changing one
another” (5).
However,
the foundation of the Arab-Islamic era
can be traced back in the first place to
the Arab element and Islamic religion
and then to the inhabitants of the land
which the Arabs have conquered. These
inhabitants are the inheritors of the
Mediterranean civilizations (Egypt,
Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Greece and Rome)
and the Asian civilizations (China,
India, Persia, and Asia Minor) (6).
Since the mid Umayyad Period, “merging
factors” appeared that led to the
emergence of the Arab Islamic
civilization. Since the reign of the
Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan
(65-86 Hejira/685-705 A.D.), the Arabic
language had become the official
language as it was the language of the
Holy Qur’an. This Arabization process
and the unceasing conversion to Islam
were major factors in highlighting the
Arab Islamic civilization (7).
The
non-Arab elements, on the other hand,
such as the Hindu, Persian and Greek,
melted within the Arab Islamic
civilization, and this in its turn led
to a cultural interaction in all
sciences and arts. With the conquest of
India during the reign of Al-Walid ibn
Abdel Malik (86-96/705-715 A.D.) a
merging of the civilizations occurred.
(In fact, the Hindu civilization reached
us through the Persian civilization).
The Arabs translated into Arabic Indian
arithmetic books and they benefited a
lot from the Indian numbers. The Arabs
translated also Indian books on
astrology. The Indias excelled in
medicine, poetry and language and many
words from Indian entered the Arab
lexicon such as the words ‘bamboo’,
‘pepper’, and ‘parrot’; and we also
inherited the game of chess from the
Indians, not to mention the influence of
Indian tales on Arab writers such as the
book of fables Kalila wa Dumnah
(8).
With the
conquest of Persia, the Arab and Persian
cultures merged and many Persian men of
letters became Muslims and showed great
interest in the Arabic language, such as
Ibn Qutaibah, Ibn Jarir Al-Tabari,
Al-Bukhari, Muslim, Al-Razi,
Al-Zamakhshari, and Al-Khawarizimi. The
movement of translation from Persian to
Arabic gained momentum particularly
after the decline and fall of the Arab
Umayyads. Since those who rebelled
against the Arabs had been Persians, and
since the Abbassid Caliphate had been
set up on the same spot where the
Persian Empire had been founded, it had
been only natural for the Persian
influence to have the greatest impact on
the new rising Abbasid state (9).
Tens of
those who mastered the Arabic and
Persian languages translated the Persian
heritage into Arabic including the
political heritage. They translated
Siyar Muluk Al-Ajam (The Biography
of Persian Kings), Kitab Al-Taj
(Crown Book), Ouyoun Al-Akhbar
(Eyes of the News), and the Sirat
Al-Furs (Biography of the Persians),
and others (10). The aim of the
translation of political books was to
re-establish the order of government and
its political philosophy on Persian
principles. Writers during the 2nd
and 3rd centuries Hijra
became experts in politics. ‘Abdel
Rahman Badawi says that this in its turn
led the supporters of the Hellenistic
(merging of Oriental and Hellenic)
culture to encounter the supporters of
Persian civilization. The supporters of
the Hellenistic civilization highlighted
the fact that the Greeks possessed
writings that were equal in importance
to those of the Persians. Most of the
supporters of the Hellenistic culture
were Christians that converted to Islam,
while the supporters of the Persian
civilization had a Persian origin. Each
group had to underscore the advantages
of the civilization they supported
through translation. At times they were
obliged to invent books and attribute
them to major Greek or Persian writers
as a sign of appreciation (11).
On the
other hand, it should be noted that
Persia had always been a fertile land
for the Greek and Hellenistic cultures
since the conquests of Alexander the
Great (336-323 B.C.) Persia had become a
major road for transmitting the Persian
civilization to the Arab world
especially via Gundishapor city and its
medical institutions. The merging of the
Arab and Hellenistic civilizations led
to the emergence of a translation
movement into Arabic that reached the
Arab mind through Syriac. This melting
of the various civilizations resulted in
a cultural interaction in the various
fields of science and arts. For example,
the medical heritage of the Arabs began
with “very little heritage, then
openness to broad civilizations that had
been inherited from ancient Egyptians
and Babylonians, then from Indian,
Persian and Greek contemporaries… The
new science started with the translation
of past heritage, its collection,
scrutiny and then absorption… From this
fountain of knowledge, the Arab
scientists, men of letters and geniuses
began to give, invent, add and enrich
until they attained their Golden Age
during the 4th century Hijra
(i.e. 10th century A.D.)”
(12).
Decades
after the establishment of Baghdad in
762 A.D., the public started to have
access to the important books of
Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Galinos,
Euclid, and Patlimos (13).
Religious Divisions and the Translation
Movement into Syriac
How did
the translation movement take place so
fast? There is a major factor that had
the greatest impact on the translation
movement during the Abbassid Era, that
is the translation from Greek into
Syriac. Yousef Al-Kilani says that
before the rise of Islam by one or two
centuries an active translation movement
from Greek to Syriac took place, and the
Assyrian translators used their mother
tongue in this translation movement.
Since Syriac was the cousin -- even
sister -- of the Arabic language, it was
easy to employ the same Syriac methods,
expressions and words in Arabic (14).
There is no doubt that the enormous
efforts of the Assyrian translators had
upgraded the level of the Arabic
language to that of universal languages.
The
dangerous developments that took place
in the Church Synod in Ephesus (431
A.D.) led to the banning of the
teachings of Nestor, the Bishop of
Constantinople, which stated that
Christ had two full distinctive
personalities, the first was that He is
the Son of God and the other is that He
is the Son of Man, and that Mary had not
given birth to an incarnated God but to
a human and therefore Mary could not
claim she was the mother of God but the
mother of Christ (15). There were other
developments that occurred at the
Chaldean Synod (451 A.D.) which banned
those who called for the compound nature
of Christ (Monophysites). This had a
great effect on the Christian Church
(16). As a result, the ecumenical
Assyrian Church was divided into several
denominations including the Eastern
Assyrian Church, known as the Nestorian
Church, and the Orthodox (Western)
Assyrian Church, known as the Jacobite
Church. In protest against the Greek and
Roman Churches, followers of both
churches gave up the use of the language
of their oppressors and used instead the
Syriac language in their religious
liturgies. Additionally, they dedicated
themselves to the dissemination of a
distinctive local theology and
philosophy through the translated
material and Assyrian interpretations.
Thus the Golden Age of Assyrian
literature and art was launched (17).
The period between the two divisions
during the 5th century A.D.
and the Islamic interest in medicine and
philosophy had been a prolific and
fertile period for translation and
interpretation. The followers of the
Eastern Assyrian Church translated the
works of well-reputed theologians such
as Theodore Al-Mafsousti, as well as the
writings of Greek thinkers such as
Aristotle (18).
In
addition to theology and philosophy,
there was great interest in medicine,
astronomy and chemistry which they
thought to be closely related as
sciences. The great leader of this
medical school of thought was Paul
Al-Ajini who was famous during the
Islamic conquests and whose books on
medicine had become the foundation for
Arab and Latin medical education. The
greatest Syriac scientist was Sergius
Al-Ras Eini (died 539 A.D.) who was a
translator of the letters in philosophy,
medicine and astronomy. His biggest
interest was in medical research. He
translated many of the works of Galinos
(19). He spent some time in Alexandria
where he completed his study of Greek
language, and he studied medicine and
chemistry at a medical school in
Alexandria (20). The writings of Sergius
were widespread among the followers of
both the Eastern and Western divisions
of the Assyrian Church who regarded him
as an authoritative reference in
medicine and logic. Later, the writings
of Sergius became the foundation for the
emergence of medical studies in the Arab
world (21).
Among
the brilliant names of Assyrian
translators in the aftermath of the
Islamic openings were Sirius Sabokhat
and his students Athanasius Al-Baladi
and Jacob Al-Rahawi and Giorgios (Bishop
of the Arabs) who translated the works
of Aristotle on logic (22).
The
Eastern and Western Assyrian Churches
were characterized by extreme jealousy
to spread their doctrine among the
people. The Eastern Church extended to
the borders of China, and it also spread
among Al-Hira Arabs at the end of the 16th
century A.D. The Orthodox Assyrian
Church spread in the Syrian Desert and
among the Ghasasinds and in Mesopotamia
in the 5th and 6th
centuries (23). In addition, the
Assyrian had blood and language
connections with the Arabs before the
Arab conquests. Thus when the Arabs
conquered Syria, the Assyrian received
them and considered them rescuers from
Byzantine forces and the Melkite Church
(24). The most valuable thing the Arabs
found in the Fertile Crescent were
centers that emanated the lights of
Hellenistic culture such as the cities
of Edessa, the center of Christian
Assyrian, Haran and Antioch, the ancient
centers, and Alexandria, the center of
philosophy and eastern and western
sciences.
The
First Abbassid Era and the Role of
Christians in Science and Medicine
The
major role that Christians played in
this era was the translation of the
medicine and sciences into Arabic. We
will focus only on the translation of
medicine by the Assyrian Christians who
were followers of the Eastern Church and
who had a pioneering role at that time.
The
development of the dynamic and
pluralistic Islamic Arab society in
which several social forces had been
growing, as well as the development of
the Arab thought from simple reasoning
during the pre-Islamic Period to that of
abstract, analytical and structural
reasoning during the First Abbassid Era,
led gradually to the emergence of an
active translation movement of the
sciences (25). Religious sciences held
the first place because they were
related to Islam, including the science
of interpretation (Tafsir), the science
of Prophetic sayings, (Al-Hadith) as
well as philology, rhetoric, grammar,
literature and history. On the other
hand, the intellectual sciences (the
sciences of conquered peoples) or the
sciences of the pioneers such as
philosophy, mathematics, astrology and
astronomy, geography, cosmography,
medicine, pharmaceutics, natural science
(physics), had been given special
attention by the state itself (26).
According to Peters, “it was more like a
dynamic explosion after lengthy
preparation during the past two
centuries” (27).
It is
worth mentioning here that the city of
Gundishapor in Persia was the launching
point for Greek medical sciences which
reached the Arabs through Baghdad. In
fact, as Baghdad prospered and thrived
in the medical sciences, Gundishapor
declined until it eventually
disappeared. Greek sciences reached
Persia during interrupted periods which
began with the advent of Alexander the
Great to Persia in 331 B.C., then via
the Greek captives after the Battle of
Al-Ruha (266 A.D.) in which the Persians
were victorious. Many of the Greek
captives had been engineers and doctors
who were given special residence in
Shapor camp (Gundishapor)—now Shahabad
in Khozistan region in south-west Iran.
It is said that during the reign of
Shapor I and Shapor II, the first
medical school and hospital had been set
up in Gundishapor.
During
the third period in which Greek sciences
began to spread, there was schism within
the Church and the Nestorian Assyrian
followers of the Eastern Church escaped
to Iran where the Church gradually
became Nestorian. The Golden Age of this
medical school in Gundishapor was during
the reign of Kisra Anasharwan (531-579
A.D.) when the city of Gundishapor
became a an international medical
center. Additionally, during the reign
of Kisra seven neo-Platonists arrived at
Gundishapor fleeing from the persecution
of Byzantine forces after the closure of
Athenian medical college in 529 A.D.
However, we do not know much about this
cultural center, its Hellenistic, Hindu,
Persian and Syriac elements except what
arrived to us during the Islamic era
when Assyrian Nestorians held primary
positions in it (28).
During
the reign of Abbasid Caliph Mansour, the
Dean of Gundishapor medical center,
Giorgios Ben Bakhtoshoa (c. 771 A. D.)
was recalled to Baghdad in order to cure
the Caliph. “The coming of Giorgios to
Baghdad is regarded as an important
event. Most likely this doctor brought
the attention of the Caliph to care for
medicine and to the translation of
medical books into Arabic and to make
them available to all who desired to
take medicine as a profession” (29).
The
translated books of Giorgios include
Al-Kinash, the first medical book
that had been translated into Arabic in
Baghdad and it included information on
stomach diseases, intestinal ulcer,
urinary tracts, diseases of the uterus,
the liver, measles, joints and diabetic
sciatica (30).
The
Caliph admired Giorgios and depended on
his cure. He was also generous to him.
It is said that Al-Mansour once said to
Giorgios jokingly, “Doctor, convert to
Islam and I guarantee heaven for you.”
Giorgios replied, “I will go where my
forefathers had gone before me, either
to heaven or to hell.” At that time the
custom was that scientific professions
were restricted to particular families,
as was the case with dyeing and other
professions and crafts. Children
inherited the profession from their
fathers and in their turn they
bequeathed it to their children, and so
on. Thus Bakhtishoa son of Giorgios (c.
801 A.D.) was the head doctor at Baghdad
Hospital during the reign of Abbasid
Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid; and his son,
known as Gabriel Ben Bakhtishoa, was
also the personal doctor of Al-Rashid in
the year 805 A.D. The Bakhtoshoa family
lived and prospered in Baghdad for 250
years in spite of all the political
changes that had taken place during that
time (31).
Among
the Christian Arab doctors who served in
the caliphate’s court during the First
Abbassid Era was the Bani Tayfouri
family, particularly Abdallah Ben
Al-Tayfouri. It has been said that he
studied at Gundishapor and accompanied
Al-Mahdi in his military campaigns.
Zakaria Ben Abdallah Al-Tayfouri served
the Caliph Al-Mutasem and Israel Ben
Zakaria, Abdallah’s grandson, served the
Caliph’s vizier Al-Mutawakel(32).
Among
the first translators from Greek was Abu
Yahya ibn Al-Batrik who, it has been
said, translated the important works of
Galinos and Hippocrates and Patlimos.
But these first translations were
literal, and therefore they were edited
and re-copied during the reign of
Al-Ma’moun and Al-Rashid. Besides, Yahya
Abu Zakaria ibn Massawayh (c. 855 A.D.)
was mentioned as one of the first
translators. He was instructed by
Gabriel Ben Bakhtoshoa and later became
the teacher of Hunayn ibn Ishak who
served the Abbasids: Haroun Al-Rashid,
Al-Amin and Al-Ma’moun. Ibn Ishak is
considered the founder of medical
research (33).
Ibn
Ishak was interested in medical
sciences, manuscripts and anatomy. He
also worked in the anatomy of apes in
order to support his argument regarding
the opinion of Galinos in this respect.
His teacher ibn Massawayh was bad
tempered and his dismissal of his
student Hunayn ibn Ishak will always
remain a notorious incident connected to
the translation of Ibn Massawayh. The
church pastor complained to Yahya about
a dysfunction in his stomach, and Yahya
advised him to use some medicine and the
pastor told him he had already done so.
Yahya then prescribed another medicine
but the pastor said he had taken tons of
it already. Yahya prescribed a third
kind of medicine, and the pastor said he
had drunk a pitcher of it. In a moment
of anger Yahya said to the pastor, “If
you want to recover you have to become a
Muslim because Islam heals the stomach”
(34).
The
books and manuscripts attributed to ibn
Massawayh include Kitab Al-‘Ain
(The Book of the Eye) which is the first
book in Arabic written about the eye and
its layers; Al-Mahmiyat, a book
about ear and the causes of migrains and
jaundice of the liver and the gall
bladder; and Al-Kana’es Al-Mushajar
about the kidney’s swelling and the
causes of sciatica; plus other medical
manuscripts about phlegm, headaches,
poison, anatomy and pain of the joints
(35).
But the
pioneering translator was unquestionably
Hunayn ibn Ishak Al-Abbadi. He belonged
to Al-Abbad tribe that settled in
Al-Hira (few kilometers from Al-Koufa in
Iraq) during the reign of the Arab
Christian Manathira. Khalid ibn Al-Walid
conquered Al-Hira in 12 Hejira/632 A.D.
and its inhabitants retained their
faith. After the establishment of
Al-Koufa, Al-Hira started to decline
until it eventually disappeared. It is
likely that Abu Hunayn Ishak Al-Abbadi
was crushing medical substances to
prepare medicine according to the
prescription of doctors. It is most
likely that he practiced medicine as
well as pharmaceutics since the
combination of both crafts was familiar
at that time. Hunayn was influenced by
that environment and he had a strong
desire to study medical sciences (36).
He went to Baghdad and enlisted in the
council of Yahya ibn Massawayh. He read
a book by Galinos translated by
Massawayh called Al-Farq (The
Difference), a book read by all medical
novices. Hunayn was argumentative that
one day Massawayh became angry with him
and said to him, “What do the people of
Al-Hira have to do with medicine. You
have better sell goods on the road.” And
he dismissed him from his council.
Hunayn left Massawayh’s council full of
pain but he embarked on studying Greek
from its origin in order to unfold the
secrets of the written medical
profession in that language. He also
went on several trips in search for
medical sciences. He went to
Gundishapor, Basra, Greece and
Alexandria to study Greek and to know
more about the medical profession. He
returned to Baghdad in 826 A.D. and
brought with him precious Greek
manuscripts(37).
When he
went to Baghdad a second time, Hunayn
started the translation of the books and
manuscripts he had brought with him, and
the most famous doctors of Baghdad and
the vizier of the Caliph’s court Gabriel
Ben Bakhtishoa admired his translations.
When Massoui looked at Hanin’s
translations, he admired them and asked
Hunayn to return to his council and the
medical coterie in Al-Ma’moun’s court.
During the reign of Al-Mutawakel he was
appointed head of the translation
department in Dar Al-Hikma (38).
Hunayn
wrote about 140 books mostly in Arabic
while his translations were done in
Syriac. His most important books include
Masa’el Hunayn (Hunayn’s Issues),
a book that is considered an
introduction to the medical profession
and it was highly esteemed by Arab
doctors before the appearance of
Avicenna’s book Al-Qanoun (The
Law). Hunayn’s book was translated into
Latin in the 12th century. The other
important books by Hunayn include The
Structure of the Eye According to
Hippocrates and Galinos: Ten Articles
(39).
Dr Kamel
Al-Samarrai from Baghdad Medical College
says, “It is not easy to translate
medical books from one language to
another, unless the translator knows
well the medical terms and its practice
in the language of the original book.
The difficulty is aggravated especially
if the translator has no knowledge of
the application of the medical sciences,
and knowledge of the vocabulary of both
languages. Some Arab translators had
these qualifications, but Hunayn ibn
Ishak, who is considered the leader of
this group of translators, had no match.
He was a medical practitioner, a man of
letters, and an expert in Syriac, Greek
and Arabic language. At the same time he
proved that Arabic language is powerful
in expressing scientific notions using
simple and clear terms. Hunayn’s effort
can be best understood by comparing them
to the difficulties that Arab League
faces at the present time in the
translation of English or French books
into Arabic” (40).
Hunayn
was known for his flexibility in the
employment of grammar and the coinage of
new words or translating them from their
denotative meaning to the technical
meaning. He did not hesitate in using
foreign words in Arabic such as diabetes
and dysentery when he failed to find a
synonym for them in Arabic(41).
Some of
the widely circulated words during
Hunayn’s time are: arithmetic,
geometric, geography, music, philosophy,
ethereal, elixir, magnet, organ, and
others (42).
Hunayn
did his best to have access to Greek
manuscripts to compare and contrast them
in order to arrive at an authoritative
text. He did not do literal translation
like other translators before him did,
such as Ibn Al-Batriq. He understood the
meaning of the sentences first and then
translated the meaning into Arabic.
Hunayn and his students contributed to
the development of the Arabic language
as a scientific language capable of
expressing complicated and abstract
ideas (43).
Conclusion
I would
like to draw your attention here that
all doctors during the different Islamic
eras who succeeded the era of
translation had adopted the use of terms
coined during the time of Hunayn without
changing their pronunciation or meaning.
The
translation movement into Arabic
indicates that the Arabs realized that
great success in the sciences and
reaching a degree of innovation and
creativity in it could not be realized
true unless the works written in other
language had been translated into
Arabic.
The
translation movement is also an evidence
of the freedom of thought that Arab
Christians and Assyrians had during the
Islamic Arab civilization.
This
essay can serve as an introduction to
more expansive researches that address
the translation movement and other
scientific fields among the Arabs such
as philosophy (including logic and
ethics), chemistry, ophthalmology,
pharmaceutics, herbal sciences,
navigation, geography, astronomy and
astrology. I therefore suggest to
Al-Liqa’ Center to launch a series of
lectures and panel sessions on
scientific topics to be presented not
only to university lecturers and
professors but to the Palestinian public
as well and to local schools so as to
incruse awareness among Palestinians and
Arabs.
Endnotes
1. About
the division of the Abbassid Era, see
Omar Al-Daqqaq, Masader Al-Turath
Al-Arabi (The Origins of the Arab
Heritage), 2nd edition,
Aleppo, 1970, pp. 11-14. About the
literary and intellectual life of the
First Abbassid Era, see Shawqi Daif,
Al-‘Asr Al-Abbasi Al-Awwal (The
First Abbasid Era), Cairo, n.d.
2.
Manfred Olman, Islamic Medicine,
trans. Youssef Al-Kilani, Kuwait, 1981,
p. 22, no. 6, in Arabic
3.
Al-Daqqaq, p. 3
4. The
introduction of Director-General of the
Arab Cultural, Educational and
Scientific Organization to the book
Introduction to the History of Medicine
and Pharmaceulgoy Among the Arabs,
n.d., p. 7, in Arabic
5. ‘Abd
Al-Mun’im Majed, The History of
Islamic Civilization During the Middle
Ages, Cairo, 1963, p. 11 in Arabic
6. ibid,
p. 13
7. ibid,
pp. 15-17
8.
Mustafa Al-Shaka, Features of Islamic
Civilization, 2nd
edition, Beirut, 1975, p. 128, in Arabic
9. ibid,
pp. 129 – 130
10)
ibid, p. 131.
11)
Greek Principles of Political Theories
in Islam, Part I, ed. and introduced
byAbdel Rahman Badawi, Cairo, 1954, pp.
5 – 8, in Arabic
12) A
Brief History of Arab Medicine and
Pharmaceulogy, p. 197, in Arabic
13) See
Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs,
Part I, 4th edition, Beirut,
1965, pp. 380 – 386
14)
Olman, p. 41, no. 21
15) De
Lacey O’Leary, Arab
Thought and Its Place in History,
trans. and ed. by Ismail Al-Bitar,
Beirut, 1972, p. 33 in Arabic
16)
ibid, p. 37
17)
ibid, pp. 35,37
18)
ibid, p. 34
19)
Galinos (131 A.D.) Greek thinker who
collected the works of Hippocrates (c.
375 B.C.) and preserved them from loss.
For the first Arabs, Galinos was as
esteemed as Hippocrates.
20)
O’Leary, pp. 43 – 44
21)
ibid, p. 45 – 47
22)
Abdel Aziz Salem, History of the
Arabs During the Pre-Islamic Era,
Beirut, 1970, pp. 482 – 483 in Arabic
23)
Philip Hitti, History of Syria,
Lebanon and Palestine, Part
II, trans. Kamal Al-Yaziji, Beirut,
1959, pp. 94 – 95, in Arabic
24)
Hussein Muurwwa, Material Trends in
Islamic Arab Philosophy, Beirut,
1979, p. 899, in Arabic
25)
ibid, p. 899, and Majed, pp. 165 – 210
and 211 – 255
26)
Muruwa, p. 899
27) See
F.E.Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs,
New York, 1968, pp. 41 – 55
28)
Hitti, History of the Arabs, pp.
382 – 384, see Louis Shikho,
Christian Learned Men in Islam, 622
– 1300, Rome, 1983, pp. 127 – 129, in
Arabic
29)
Kamel Samarai, A Brief History of
Arab Medicine, Baghdad, 1984, p.
384, in Arabic
30)
Hitti, History of the Arabs, p.
382
31)
Al-Samarai, p. 409 – 413, and Shikho,
pp. 183 – 185
32)
Daif, pp. 116 – 117, and Shikho, pp. 210
– 212
33)
Al-Samarai, pp. 416 – 418, and Shikho,
pp. 210 -212
34)
Al-Samarai, pp. 420 – 427, and Shikho,
pp. 211 – 212
35)
Al-Samarai, p. 429, note 1, 430, and
Shikho, pp. 152 – 156
36)
Al-Samarai, pp. 431 – 432, and Shikho,
pp. 152 – 156
37)
Al-Samarai, p. 433
38)
ibid, pp. 440 – 459
39)
ibid, pp. 341 – 342
40)
ibid, p. 342
41)
Hitti, History of the Arabs, p.
386 note, 1
42)
Olman, p. 41
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