Galenic Translations and the Risala
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The head of the translation effort describes his own method with a candour that would satisfy a modern editor, listing which manuscripts he found, which were defective, and where he had to reconstruct.
- translation method stated openly, including its failures and gaps
- manuscripts collated to establish a text before rendering it
- sense-for-sense translation defended against word-for-word
- the earliest systematic treatise on the eye, with diagrams
Hunayn and his team rendered most of the Galenic corpus, along with Hippocrates, Dioscorides and others, into Syriac and Arabic. His Risala lists around a hundred and thirty Galenic works, stating for each what he translated, for whom, at what age, from which manuscripts, and how far earlier versions were usable. He compared copies to establish a text before translating and preferred sense over word-for-word rendering. His Ten Treatises on the Eye is the earliest systematic ophthalmology, with anatomical diagrams.
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