e — Gundeshapur:

Gundeshapur lay in Khuzestan (al-Ahwaz); its place is now occupied by the city of Shahabad in the southwest of Iran. It was founded by the Sasanian king Shapur I. Shapur I (241–272 AD) transferred a portion of the captives from the Syrian cities under Roman rule during the Irano-Roman wars and settled them in the new city named after him (Gundeshapur). The Sasanians also made use of the captured Roman craftsmen in building fortresses and organizing irrigation works. The presence of foreigners — captives and migrants, the majority of them Syrian Syriacs — in Iran helped make available the prerequisites for scientific study. On the one hand, their mastery of the Syriac language, the most widespread in scholarly circles in those times, aided them in transmitting the Greek scientific and intellectual heritage in its various branches, though the share devoted to medicine was the greater. On the other hand, their presence in Iran helped them learn the Pahlavi language, which enabled them to acquaint themselves with and draw upon the sciences and philosophy of Iran and India — for the medical and scientific knowledge of India and its philosophy had already been rendered from Sanskrit into Pahlavi — and so the knowledge of East and West blended together. This helped provide the foundation of the scientific base upon which the Greek-Syrian school of medicine arose, the school that was established at Gundeshapur in the reign of Khosrow Anushirvan (531–579 AD). This school had an influence later on, for it supplied the Muslim caliphs with the most skilled and renowned physicians, such as the Nestorian physician Jurjis ibn Bukhtishu, whom al-Mansur summoned from Gundeshapur; from that time the House of Bukhtishu became physicians of the Abbasid court for a long period. The reason, as Dr. Muhammad Kamil Husayn holds, is (that they represented a class of physicians known among the ancients, namely the court physicians. These men's cleverness exceeded their learning. The qualities that prevailed in them were skill, good judgment, and much cunning in resisting intrigues, and some of the scheming they carried out on their own behalf. The House of Bukhtishu were among those who possessed all of that. They never angered a caliph, they survived the downfall of the Barmakids despite their friendship with them, and one of them took part in the misfortune of Hunayn ibn Ishaq. The Gundeshapur school of medicine rose in standing until it became a distinguished cultural center — not merely by virtue of its proximity to a great hospital and the interest the Sasanian kings took in it, but because it became a refuge and sanctuary for the persecuted Syriacs who carried with them the treasures of Greek knowledge, in addition to the migration of the Greek scholars from Athens when Justinian closed all the schools of philosophy in 529 AD. This helped bring about an intermingling and a precise understanding of the various Greek, Indian, and Persian cultures. It also paved the way for Khosrow Anushirvan to benefit from the expertise of these migrant and settled minds when he founded the aforementioned school of medicine. As for the importance of this cultural school across the generations, the extent of its service to humanity, and its significance for Islamic civilization — that is something well attested, even if Dr. Muhammad Kamil Husayn tried to belittle it, considering that the fame it attained (among historians of Arab medicine) rested upon (the fame, glory, and favor that the House of Bukhtishu won with the Abbasid caliphs). Yet scholarly precision brings this importance to the fore, for Meyerhof says of the migration of the scholars of Athens to Gundeshapur: "There they met the scholars of the Syriacs, of India, and of Persia. From this arose a scholarly activity whose importance lay in the advancement of Islamic thought. Khosrow Anushirvan sent his physicians to India to search for books and render them into Pahlavi (the language of central Iran) from their original Sanskrit; likewise many Greek scientific books were translated into Persian or Syriac." Brockelmann also wrote of the importance of the college of medicine (which Meyerhof calls an institute) at Gundeshapur: "Although the medical school of Alexandria, with its philosophical spirit, had breathed its last shortly after the Arab conquest that severed its ties with Byzantium, the Syrians in Antioch and Harran continued to protect and develop its heritage and transmitted it to Baghdad. In truth, the impact of the college of medicine that the Sasanians had earlier established at Gundeshapur, in the region of Susiana, was greater in this respect. From there came the famous family of Bukhtishu, with the great physicians it produced, such as Jurjis ibn Jibril, who treated the caliph al-Mansur in Baghdad, and others whose names shone in this craft after al-Mansur's era as well. In Baghdad, Greek medicine met Indian medicine on common ground. Harun al-Rashid himself had once summoned the Indian physician Manka to Baghdad, and the Barmakids had ordered the translation of some Indian medical books into Arabic. So it was at the hands of the House of Bukhtishu and others that the Greek, Indian, and Iranian medical books which had been studied at the Gundeshapur academy of medicine were translated. Jibril of the House of Bukhtishu, who died in 830 AD, wrote useful works on medicine and logic and addressed treatises to the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun. For this reason, the House of Bukhtishu won favor not merely because they were physicians of the Abbasid court, but also because of their scholarly activity. O'Leary points to the role of the caliph Abu Ja'far al-Mansur in discovering the House of Bukhtishu and their being embraced by the Abbasid court, along with other Nestorian physicians and scholars, when he says: "The caliph al-Mansur was the patron who did what he could to draw the physicians and the Nestorians to the city of Baghdad that he founded, and he was likewise a prince who exerted himself to encourage those who undertook to prepare Arabic translations of Greek, Syriac, and Persian works." The Sasanians' embrace of the persecuted and the exiles among the subjects of their Roman-Byzantine enemies, and of others among the Christians of Iraq, provided an atmosphere that encouraged — through the knowledge and wisdom of these men — openness and creativity. It also helped create a firm scholarly base that enabled the Gundeshapur school of medicine to continue teaching Greek philosophy and medicine for three centuries after the fall of the Sasanians. The Arabs' and Muslims' non-interference, and thereafter the encouragement of the Abbasid caliphs, had the greatest effect on its continuing to carry out its scholarly and humanitarian mission, until new medical and scientific centers arose and the scholars and physicians of Gundeshapur turned away from it.

The Translators

We have seen how the Syriacs were distinguished by the abundance of their translations and the breadth of their contributions — whether in what they translated into their own language from Greek or from both [languages] into Arabic, taking care to be precise and faithful despite the difficulties and problems they faced. Claude Cahen holds that at first Syriac had the upper hand because it was more readily available in the Islamic world, and because knowledge of Syriac was more widespread than knowledge of Greek; then the Arabs desired to obtain translations directly from the Greek after they perceived the shortcomings of double translations. And if most of what is said here is directed toward mentioning the Syriac translators — since they had the foremost place in this field in both quantity and quality — the standing of the practitioners of translation from other nationalities and religions will not be slighted, nor will mention of them be neglected, for translation and the cultural centers were not the monopoly of any one people or any particular place. Nor were they all influenced by Greek influences alone, for, as we have seen, the sciences, knowledge, wisdom, and philosophy of India were translated into Pahlavi and from it into Syriac and into Arabic. Some Jews too contributed to the scientific movement, and some of them practiced matters relating to medical affairs. For this reason, our mention of the translators will include mention of others among the contributors in this field who were not Syriacs. The Arabic language, with its flexibility and its supremacy — thanks to the faith and the authority — helped translation play its important role as a civilizing factor; and Arabic likewise has an unforgettable merit in reviving the sciences that had been consigned to oblivion. In this connection the German orientalist Sigrid Hunke notes: (What the Arabs rescued of cultures was not to be preserved in museums and cellars, far from light and air.. No — everything they saved from extinction they brought out of the world of oblivion and decay, breathed new life into it, and placed it within reach of every seeker by way of translation. And they translated it not into a rigid, alien tongue, but into a language then living everywhere: the language of the Qur'an). Perhaps it is useful to note, before beginning to mention the translators, that most of the translations reached a level of mastery and were distinguished by a lofty literary style that reveals a philological command and a scientific breadth. The works of Hunayn ibn Ishaq, by way of example and not limitation, need no elaboration. Moreover, the sense among the dhimmis of being denied equality spurred them to attain wealth and favor by way of learning, though some were driven by love of knowledge for its own sake or of wealth for its own sake. What must be mentioned in the field of the Syriacs' contribution to scientific translations is what Meyerhof reports concerning the Syriac Iraqi scholar and physician Sergius of Ras al-Ayn (died 536 AD): "He was the first famous scholarly figure among Syriac speakers, and he was not a Nestorian; rather he was a Syriac Orthodox priest, and an authority for the physicians of Iraq, his country. He it was who set about translating the medical works of the Greeks into the Syriac language. Numerous translations of the views of Galen were attributed to him, and their simplicity and plainness [?] were sufficient to spread the Greek medical sciences and disseminate them in western Asia for more than two centuries.

Abdullah ibn al-Muqaffa (d. 144 AH / 760 AD), who is reckoned foremost among the translators from Persian, translated the "Khwaday-Namag" and called it (Siyar al-Muluk / The Lives of the Kings); it deals with the history of the Iranians from the aristocratic point of view regarding the events of Iran. Claude Cahen holds that the Arab historians drew their basic information on this history from it, and the (national) poet Ferdowsi likewise borrowed from it. (There are translations of the Khwaday-Namag other than that of Ibn al-Muqaffa, and there are other historical books translated from Persian such as the Ayin-Namag — the traditions or the ceremonies — and the Gah-Namag — the ranks of the great.) And Kalila wa-Dimna, translated from Indian into Pahlavi, Ibn al-Muqaffa translated into Arabic as well; it left its mark on Arabic prose and the story, and the Arabic version of Ibn al-Muqaffa's translation of Kalila wa-Dimna (the fables of the Indian philosopher Bidpai — as some know it) became the authoritative reference after the loss of the original Sanskrit version and the Pahlavi one translated from it, and it was this version that was transmitted to the West. Khudabakhsh says of Ibn al-Muqaffa that he (was the first to make the Muslims aware of the importance of languages in the Middle Ages

To be continued in the next issue