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95 Syriac and 34 Arabic versions. unayn
also composed original medical writings,
including the very influential
K. al-Masāil
fi 'l-ibb li 'l-mutaallimīn
and the ophthal-
mological treatise
K. al-A
ª
r maālāt fi
'l-ayn.
unayn and other translators,
such as the Melkite usā b. Lūā, had
access to the court as advisers and learned
men, and through their translations, as
well as original compositions, their work
was fundamental to the establishment of
the classical Arabic scientific and medical
vocabulary.
There are a number of early physi-
cians who are not known to have made
translations themselves but whose writings
reflect the very early period of adaptation
of foreign material. Foremost amongst
this group was another Nestorian Chris-
tian, Ibn Māsawayh, whose father had
been a physician in Gondē
ª
āpūr before
coming to Ba
∞
dād. Ibn Māsawayh com-
posed a considerable number of Arabic
medical monographs, on topics including
fevers, leprosy, melancholy, dietetics, eye
diseases and medical aphorisms. It was
reported that Ibn Māsawayh regularly
held a
ma
¡
lis
or assembly of some sort,
where he consulted with patients and dis-
cussed subjects with pupils, amongst them
unayn b. Isā. At times, Ibn Māsawayh
apparently attracted considerable audi-
ences, having acquired a reputation for
repartee. Another important figure was
Alī b. Sahl Rabban al-abarī, who died
not long after 240/855. He not only sum-
marised Greco-Roman practices in his
compendium
Firdaws al-ikma
, dedicated
in 235/850 to the caliph al-Mutawakkil,
but also devoted a separate chapter to
Indian medicine. Neither he nor sub-
sequent writers, however, really tried to
integrate the Indian material with Greco-
Roman medicine. Approximately thirty
other physicians who practiced before
the last quarter of the 3rd/9th century
are known by name and some by extant
writings. By the end of the century the
humoral system of pathology, particularly
as had been advocated by Galen, formed
the basis of nearly all the learned Arabic
medical discourses.
Also in the 3rd/9th century there arose
a genre of medical writing called
al-ibb
al-nabawī
, or prophetic medicine, intended
as an alternative to the exclusively Greek-
based medical systems. The authors were
clerics rather than physicians, and they
advocated the traditional medical prac-
tices of the Prophet's day and those men-
tioned in the urān and
adī
º
over the
medical ideas assimilated from Hellenis-
tic society, sometimes blending the two
approaches. One of the earliest examples
is the 3rd/9th-century
·
īī collection
ibb
al-aimma
. At about the same time, Ibn
abīb al-Andalusī composed
Mu
¶
taar fi
'l-ibb
based upon
adī
º
s concerned with
medicine, while in thenext century Ibn
al-Sunnī (d. 364/974) compiled a trea-
tise on the subject that was used by later
writers. In the 7th/13th and 8th/14th
centuries, the genre became quite popu-
lar and it remains so today. The treatises
by the historian al-
‹
ahabī, the anbalī
scholar Ibn ayyim al-
⁄
awziyya, and
⁄
alāl Dīn al-Suyūī (d. 911/1505) are
still available in modern printings. Trea-
tises on prophetic medicine flourished for
centuries alongside those of the Greek-
based humoral tradition. We know of a
considerable number of treatises on
al-ibb
al-nabawī
, but we do not have the names
of any who were known for practising
this type of medicine. The reason for this
may be that our written sources are for
the most part skewed toward the Greek-
based system and omit details of other
practices. It would seem that treatises on
al-ibb al-nabawī
were not considered det-
rimental to, or competitive with, medical
practices based primarily upon Hellenistic
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