Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 220

of the language and by possible mistakes
resulting from ambiguities of Syriac words,
whether the present Arabic versions were
made by unayn directly from the Greek
or by someone else after his Syriac trans-
lation. Nearly all of these Syriac versions
are now lost.

complete edition of his Greek works by
C.E. Kühn (Leipzig 1821-33); they repre-
sent by no means his whole output: some
works have survived in Arabic, Hebrew
or Latin translation only, others are unre-
trievably lost.
Although ⁄ ālīnūs stands nowhere in
the first rank, his popularity especially as a
physician grew steadily in subsequent cen-
turies, and he eventually became the most
influential teacher of medicine together
with Hippocrates (Burā) whom he had
helped to establish as a model physician
and a pattern of perfection, and whose
treatises he had explained in many elabo-
rate commentaries. When the teaching
of Greek philosophy and medicine was
definitely made part of the Christian syl-
labus of learning in ± 500, the preserva-
tion of the greater part of his numerous
works was assured and his supreme posi-
tion established for the next millennium.
Whereas the far superior works of his
predecessors in Alexandria and elsewhere
have perished, his codification of the great
achievements of the Hellenistic physi-
cians, whose independence of mind he
still understood and taught himself, was
handed on to posterity and was instru-
mental in establishing a fundamentally
unbroken tradition of scientific medicine
which never lost sight of him.
As in the case of philosophy and other
sciences, Syrian and Arabic medicine fol-
low the late Greek syllabus almost with-
out a gap. We are not too badly informed
about the Syriac translations of ⁄ ālīnūs,
by Sergius of Rā ª ayna (d. 536) and Job
of Edessa (about 825) for instance. We
have unayn b. Isā's detailed survey of
129 major and minor works by ⁄ ālīnūs
translated into Syriac and/or Arabic by
himself and others, he actually lists 179
Syriac and 123 Arabic versions. unayn's
list is not even complete. The Arabs even-
tually came to possess translations of every

unayn's own works
Besides his translations unayn com-
posed 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 Adam down to al-Mutawakkil. His
medical treatises are mainly epitomes
and rearrangements of classical material.
Many of them are written in the form of
questions and answers, this curious kind of
literature being very common also in the
biblical exegesis of the Nestorian church
at this time. His main work in this field
is al-Masāil fi 'l-ibb (numerous mss.), later
translated into Hebrew and Latin. There
also exists a so-called Isagoge Johannitii ad
parvam artem Galeni (many Latin mss. and
early printed texts). According to M.
Steinschneider this is another recension
of the same work.

(G. Strohmaier)

Galen

Galen (Ar. ⁄ ālīnūs) was born in Per-
gamon, in Asia Minor A.D. 129, died
in Rome about 199; he was the last
great medical writer in Greek antiquity,
outstanding as an anatomist and physi-
ologist as well as a practising physician,
surgeon and pharmacologist. He also
became known as an influential though
minor philosopher. More than 120 topics
ascribed to him are included in the last