Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

HUNAIN B. ISHAQ
Hunain b. Ishaq, the most important mediator of ancient Greek science to the Afabs. It was mainly due to his reliable and clearly written translations of the Hippocrates and Galen, that the Arab physician of the Middle Ages became worthy successors of the Greek. Hunain was born in 192 A.H./808 A.D.,’in al-Hira, where his father was a pharmacist. The iiasbs indicates that he was a descendant of the Ibad, i.e. Arab tribesmen who had once embraced Christianity and who after the rise of Islam remained faithful to the Syrian Nestorian Church, refusing to adopt the new religion. Hunain may be assumed to have been bilingual from his jouth, for Arabic was the vernacular of his native town and Syriac was the language of ihe liturgy and of higher Christian education. Later in life when

882 Political and Cultural History of Islam

settled in Baghdad, lie translated far more books into Syriac than into Arabic, in accordance with the wishes of his clients.
He himself showed a certain predilection for the Syriac language at the expense of Arabic, which he blamed for its lack of an adequate nomenclature as compared with either Syriac or Greek or Persian. But in their Arabic translations he and his school avoided mere transcriptions as far as possible and thus helped to forge the Arabic scientific terminology. He was also at pains to acquire a sound knowledge of Arabic grammar; he is even said to have studied it at Basra and to have brought from there al-Khalil’s Kitab al-Ayn. That he had the advantage of meeting the famous grammarian personally, as Ibn Juijul and others point out, is impossible for chronological reasons. Hunain began his study of medicine at Baghdad under Yuhanna b. Masawayh, the famous court-physician and director of the Bayt al-Hikma. Under the caliph Mutawakkal he was appointed chief physician to the court, but he had to suffer great hardships through the capricious behaviour of the Commander of the Faithful. Hunain is credited with an immense number of translations, ranging from medicine, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry to magic and oneiromancy.
Besides his translations he composed numerous original works, mainly on medical, but also on philosophical, geophysical, meteorological, zoological, linguistic and religious subjects. He is even credited with a history of the World from Hazrat Adam down to Mutawakkil. His medical treatises are mainly epitomes and rearrangements of classical materials.