Hunayn ibn Ishaq (808–873)
Born 808 CE, died 873 CE.
Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-Ibadi (808–873; also Hunain or Hunein; Arabic: أبو زيد حنين بن إسحاق العبادي; ʾAbū Zayd Ḥunayn ibn ʾIsḥāq al-ʿIbādī; known in Latin as Johannitius) was an influential Iraqi Arab Church of the East 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. Ḥunayn ibn Isḥaq was his era's most productive translator of Greek medical and scientific treatises. He studied Greek and became known as the "Sheikh of the Translators". He mastered four languages: Arabic, Syriac, Greek and Persian. Later translators widely followed Hunayn's method. He was originally from al-Hirah, previously the capital of the Lakhmid kingdom, but worked in Baghdad, the center of the Translation movement. His fame went far beyond the local community.
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