Hunayn ibn Ishaq

Hunayn ibn Ishaq
Iluminure from the Hunayn ibn-Ishaq al-'Ibadi manuscript of the Isagoge
Born	808 AD Al-Hirah
Died	873 AD Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate[1]
Academic work
Era	Islamic Golden Age
Main interests	Translation, Ophthalmology, Philosophy, Religion, Arabic grammar
Notable works	Book of the Ten Treatises of the Eye
Influenced	Ishaq ibn Hunayn

Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-Ibadi (also Hunain or Hunein) (Arabic: أبو زيد حنين بن إسحاق العبادي; ʾAbū Zayd Ḥunayn ibn ʾIsḥāq al-ʿIbādī (808–873), known in Latin as Johannitius, was an influential Arab Nestorian Christian translator, scholar, physician, and scientist. During the apex of the Islamic Abbasid era, he worked with a group of translators, among whom were Abū 'Uthmān al-Dimashqi, Ibn Mūsā al-Nawbakhti, and Thābit ibn Qurra, to translate books of philosophy and classical Greek and Persian texts into Arabic and Syriac.^[2]

Ḥunayn ibn Isḥaq was the most productive translator of Greek medical and scientific treatises in his day. He studied Greek and became known as the "Sheikh of the Translators".^[3] He mastered four languages: Arabic, Syriac, Greek and Persian. Hunayn's method was widely followed by later translators. He was originally from al-Hirah, previously capital of the Lakhmid kingdom, but he spent his working life in Baghdad, the center of the Translation movement. His fame went far beyond his own community.^[4]