LITERATURE OF THE ARABS. 81 



school of Jondisabour in Persia, founded by Shapoor 

 I. who, according to Abulfarage, married a daughter 

 of the Emperor Aurehan, and by her means intro- 

 duced the doctrines of Hippocrates into the East. 



When conquest had supphed the Arabs with the 

 means of kixury and intemperance, this science was 

 better appreciated. In the schools of Bagdad and 

 Alexandria, the study of physic was encouraged 

 with the usual munificence of the caliphs. Trans- 

 lations of Hippocrates and Galen issued from the 

 same manufactory that had clothed Plato and Aris- 

 totle in an oriental dress. Most of these versions, 

 the merit of which is freely discussed by Renaudot, 

 and piously defended by Casiri, are ascribed to Ho- 

 nain^ an eminent physician of the Nestorian sect, 

 who died A. D. 576 ; and Messue, the celebrated 

 preceptor of Almamoun, who was principal or su- 

 perintendent of the College of Bagdad. Serapion, 

 Alkhendi, Thibet ibn Korra, the friend and astrolo- 

 ger of the Caliph ^Motaded, Baktishua and his son 

 Gabriel, with a host of others, are names which adorn 

 the medical annals of the Saracens. The lives of 

 more than 300 Mohammedan physicians, consist- 

 ing of Arabs, Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians, 

 were recorded by an author named Osaiba, part of 

 whose work, about a century ago, Mr. Mead, at his 

 own expense, caused to be translated from the ori- 

 ginal ; but it proved so incoherent and so full of 

 puerile stories, that the task was abandoned. To 

 Ah ibn Al Abbas, surnamed the Magian, from the 

 sect to which he belonged, we are indebted for the 

 earliest as well as the best account of Arabian phy- 

 sic. This eminent author was a star of the first mag- 

 nitude m the galaxy of learned men who flourished 

 at the court ofAdodowlah, sultan of Aleppo. His 

 book, called Al Meleki or Royal Work, which ap- 

 peared about the year 980, was intended to be a com- 

 plete system of medicine, and continued to maintain 

 its ascendency till superseded by the Canon oi 

 Avicenna. 



