Hunayn Ibn Ishaq al-‘Ibadi (d.260-4 AH/873-7 AD), Tarjamat Kitab Taqdimat al-Ma’rifah li-Abuqrat, (translation by Hunayn ibn Ishaq of the book of Hippocrates on Prognostics), copied by ‘Ali Ibn Burhan Nizami al-Tabari, Western Persia, dated 762 AH/1360-1 AD

Arabic manuscript on paper, 74 leaves, roughly 28 lines to the page, written in a cursive naskh script in black ink, key words and phrases underlined in red ink, catchwords, marginal glosses, red morocco binding with tooled central foliate cartouche

In generally good overall condition, spine repaired, thumbed, some minor paper repairs and stains, as viewed.
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Unusual features of the present manuscript are its oblong shape and the cursive and personal script used by the copyist. It was most likely produced as a manual for the personal use of a physician who may have been the above mentioned scribe. According to Savage-Smith, the Hippocratic treatise Prognostics was attributed by all ancient writers to Hippocrates (flourished c.450s BC), and modern scholarship maintains that it dates to the second half of the fifth century BC, and can be assigned to the school of Cos, if not to Hippocrates himself.

Galen (died c.216 AD) wrote a commentary (tafsir) on this work which in turn was translated into Arabic for Ibrahim Ibn Muhammad Ibn Musa by Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, through the medium of a Syriac translation that Hunayn had made for Salmawayh Ibn Bunan (see Brockelman, GAL, i, 491 (647), GAL S, i, 896). ‘Ala’-al-Din Ibn Abi al-Hazm al-Qurayshi Ibn al-Nafis (d.687 AH/1288 AD) also composed commentaries on several Hippocratic treatises, including the Prognostics. According to Savage-Smith, “the commentary is in three books (maqalahs) and follows the structure of the original Hippocratic treatise. Galen’s on the same Hippocratic treatise was one of the sources used by Ibn al-Nafis, for he cites it by name several times”. The subject of the text of this manuscript, which is contained in three maqalahs, follows very closely that of the Ibn al-Nafis’s commentary. There are three copies of Galen’s commentary but none of Hunayn’s translation in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (see E. Savage-Smith, A New Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, volume I: Medicine, Oxford, 2011, pp.25-34, nos. 8-10).

For editions of the Greek text, see Jacques Jouanna, Hippocrates, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, p.408, no.48, and for Arabic translation of the Hippocratic treatise, see Dietrich, Medicinalia Arabica, pp.221-4, no.112.