# Ḥunayn, Ḥubaysh, and the Arabic vocabulary of Galen

99.8 s · Narrator: Frederick Surrey · Reader: Ghizlane

The word retina is already in a Latin version of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Arabic book on the eye; his letter on the Galen translations lists 129 works and records how he collated several Greek copies into one correct text before he corrected his translation; his nephew Ḥubaysh put many of his Syriac versions into Arabic, and a later historian says some readers scraped Ḥubaysh’s name off them and wrote Ḥunayn’s; his book gives each coat of the eye a Greek name and an Arabic name that translates it, and Constantine the African’s Latin called three of them retina, uvea and cornea; and the House of Wisdom that popular histories put him in charge of is not in his letter.

| Time | Voice | Line | On screen |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0:00.62 | Narrator | The word retina is already in a Latin version of an Arabic book on the eye. | The Codex Gigas, f. 249r, close on the written word retina, which lights; the camera eases back to the column. Heading: The word retina. |
| 0:05.12 | Narrator | The Arabic book is by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, who translated the works of the Greek physician Galen in ninth-century Baghdad. | Ḥunayn’s diagram of the coats of the eye (Meyerhof’s Plate 1, from the copy dated 1196), its label الملتحمه lit; it mixes into the globe: pins on Pergamon and Baghdad. |
| 0:13.08 | Narrator | His letter lists 129 works and says which ones had been translated, and by whom. | Bergsträsser’s Arabic text of the letter, pp. 1 to 5, in Arabic reading order; the title lights and a counter runs to 129. |
| 0:19.36 | Narrator | He translated one of them at about twenty, from a single Greek copy with many gaps. | p. 5: أبناء عشرين سنة lights, then نسخة يونانية كثيرة الأسقاط in reading order: نسخة يونانية together, then كثيرة, then الأسقاط. |
| 0:24.92 | Narrator | At about forty he compared several copies until one correct text emerged, and corrected his translation against it. | Drawn pages: three Greek copies, each with its gaps, slide together into one complete page; a Syriac page beside it takes two correction marks. Heading: One correct text. |
| 0:32.73 | Reader | وكذلك من عادتي أن أفعل في جميع ما أترجمه <br>*Subtitle:* “This is my habit in everything I translate.” | p. 5, l. 7: each word of the sentence lights as she reads it. |
| 0:38.32 | Narrator | He searched Syria, Palestine and Egypt for Galen's On Demonstration and found about half of it in Damascus. | The globe: an arc from Baghdad through Syria and Palestine to Egypt and Alexandria; the Damascus pin lights. |
| 0:45.78 | Narrator | His son Isḥāq translated Greek philosophy, and his nephew Ḥubaysh put many of Ḥunayn's Syriac versions into Arabic. | إسحق بن حنين and حبيش بن الحسن with their readings and glosses; then Wellcome MS Arabic 62, its heading ترجمه حنين بن اسحق lit. Heading: His nephew Ḥubaysh. |
| 0:55.64 | Narrator | A later historian says some readers scraped Ḥubaysh's name off his translations and wrote Ḥunayn's. | The name حبيش printed large; a blade passes and, as it leaves, the ink lifts away to a trace; حنين is written over it; the two names side by side, their dots lifted, the same first three letter shapes lit. |
| 1:03.90 | Narrator | His book on the eye gives each coat its Greek name and an Arabic name that translates it. | Meyerhof’s Arabic p. 80: the Greek names in Arabic letters light, then their Arabic names; three rows of type: Greek, Arabic, meaning. |
| 1:10.84 | Narrator | Constantine the African translated it into Latin under his own name and called these coats retina, uvea and cornea. | The Codex Gigas again: the red rubric lights, then the prologue line where Constantine names himself; the rows take their Latin names. |
| 1:20.48 | Narrator | Popular histories put Ḥunayn in charge of an academy called the House of Wisdom. | حنين, and بيت الحكمة in grey; a line drawn from حنين toward it as it comes up to white, Bayt al-Ḥikma. Heading: The House of Wisdom. |
| 1:24.56 | Narrator | His letter never mentions it and names the people he translated for. | The line draws back and بيت الحكمة greys; four lines of the letter, the patrons’ names lit in turn, each with its English under it: Muḥammad ibn Mūsā, Bukhtīshūʿ ibn Jibrīl, Salmawayh, ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā. |
| 1:30.24 | Narrator | The historian Dimitri Gutas argues that it was a library in the caliphs' administration. | Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998, set in type beside بيت الحكمة, which lights on “library”. |
| 1:35.82 | No voice |  | The globe, the pin on Monte Cassino, where Constantine the African was a monk; the General Translation lockup. |

Times are where each line starts in the final, read from the film's own audio.