A medieval ophthalmologist who translated Greek works by Galen, Hippocrates, and Plato into Arabic played a pivotal role in shaping Western medical scholarship, according to a recent study published in the journal Cogent Arts and Humanities.

In the study, authors affiliated with the University of Sharjah transcribe and translate into English the Arabic text of an original manuscript by Hunayn ibn Ishaq titled In the Eye, Two Hundred and Seven Issues. The ninth-century treatise is an innovative work in ophthalmology that corrected medieval misconceptions and significantly influenced the development of medical knowledge.

Written in a question-and-answer format, the treatise supplements ten other original essays by Hunayn that together are regarded as a landmark in both Islamic and Western medical history. In these works, he provides detailed analyses of eye anatomy, including the layers of the eye and the optic nerves, demonstrating the advances that made lasting contributions to Arabic and Western medicine alike.

“In the field of ophthalmology, Hunayn ibn Ishaq demonstrated his scientific prowess, providing evidence-based explanations and proving that disagreements about the number of eye layers were merely terminological and not substantive,” said the study’s lead author Dalal H. Al-Zubi, a doctoral candidate. “He clarified that the eye consists of seven layers, with only one responsible for vision, while the others support its function.” Hunayn also meticulously described the role of each layer, including its starting and ending points.

The study further highlights Hunayn’s explanation of the muscles controlling eye movement, noting his clarification that the brain governs these muscles via the nerve connecting it to the eye. His work ‘In the Eye, Two Hundred and Seven Issues’ provides clear evidence of the distinctiveness of his methodology in this field,” added Al-Zubi.

Enduring influence

Beyond his medical contributions, the study emphasizes Hunayn’s influence as a translator. As Al-Zubi notes, he enriched the Arabic language by introducing precise medical terminology, including terms for the retina and cornea. Rather than relying on literal translation, Hunayn employed descriptive and analogous renderings and metaphors, producing Arabized terms that conveyed meaning while remaining linguistically natural in Arabic.

A Syriac Christian polymath and member of the then prosperous and far-reaching Church of the East, Hunayn (known in the West as Johannitius) earned the epithet “Sheikh of the Translators.” He played a pivotal role as both a scholar and translator at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. His translations, often based on original Syriac and Greek manuscripts, were instrumental in preserving Greek scientific knowledge and later transmitting it to Europe.

The study examines Hunayn’s contributions to advancing the translation movement during the early Abbasid period, highlighting how he pioneered the translation paradigm that prioritized rendering the full meaning of the source text rather than adhering to the prevailing practice of word-for-word translation.

While this research marks the first time Hunayn’s Arabic manuscript In the Eye, Two Hundred and Seven Issues, has been translated into English, several of his treatises had earlier reached the West through Latin and other European translations. “Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s writings or translations were largely recognized in the West and were translated into Latin or other European languages. In fact, the medical advances brought about by the publication of Ishaq’s treatises on ophthalmology were significant,” Al-Zubi explained.

The ophthalmologist and medical historian Max Meyerhof, for example, cites Hunayn’s Kitab al-Ashr Maqalat fil-Ayn (The Ten Treatises on the Eye), noting that it represents the earliest known systemic treatment of ophthalmology. Meyerhof mentions that the text was likely used in both Islamic and Western medical schools of the period.

The research further illustrates how Hunayn developed and refined his scientific expertise in medicine. The authors observe that he possessed exceptional mastery of the Arabic language and that his translations enriched scientific and medical nomenclature. “He frequently relied on metaphorical expression, as evidenced by the Arabic term ‘al-Ankabutiyya’ for the arachnoid, explaining that it refers to a spider’s web in the original source language from which the term was derived,” Al-Zubi stated.

She added, “In other instances, he Arabized foreign terms that had no equivalents in Arabic, as he did with al-Shabakiyya for the retina and al-Multahima for the conjunctiva. He was known for coining Arabic terms for their Greek counterparts that reflected an associative relationship between the signified and the signifier. This is particularly evident in his rendering of the retina into الشبكية al-Shabakiyya, chosen because its structure resembles a fisherman’s net, given the dense interweaving of veins and arteries intertwined within it, akin to a fishing net.”

Another reason for Hunayn’s mastery of translation, according to Al-Zubi, was his careful attention to the original coinage and semantic range of Greek terms. Many of his Arabic medical designations, still in use today, were deliberately crafted to align with denotations of the source language. A case in point is Herophilus’ term ‘Amphiblēsteroeidēs,’ a Latinized form derived from ancient Greek medical terminology describing the interwoven vessels of the retina, likened to the mesh of a hoisted fishing net.

A bridge between civilizations

Hunayn’s ophthalmological treatises attest to a level of scientific sophistication that was almost unrivaled in the Middle Ages. In their study, the authors credit him with “providing evidence-based explanations and proving that disagreements about the number of eye layers were merely terminological and not substantive.”

They note that Hunayn’s anatomical analysis identified which of the eye’s seven layers was responsible for vision. He also explained “the number of muscles controlling eye movement and clarified that the brain governs these muscles through the nerve connecting it to the eye. The findings in his manuscript In the Eye: Two Hundred and Seven Questions stand as a testament to the remarkable progress of ophthalmology during the early Abbasid era.”

Asked to assess Hunayn’s place in medical history, Maamoun Saleh Abdulkarim, professor of archaeology and history at the University of Sharjah, described him as a figure of lasting significance: “Hunayn ibn Ishaq significantly influenced the development of Western medicine. He played a crucial role in translating Greek medical texts into Arabic, particularly those of Galen and Hippocrates, refining and explaining them with remarkable scholarly precision.”

Prof. Abdulkarim, who is also among the study’s co-authors, added that “these Arabic translations later served as the foundation for Latin translations used in European universities during the Middle Ages. In this way, Hunayn ibn Ishaq functioned as a vital intellectual bridge between ancient Greek medicine and the medical science that later emerged in medieval European universities.”

In academic literature, Hunayn is widely regarded as a central figure in the transmission of ancient Greek medicine to the Islamic world and in the subsequent diffusion of this knowledge to Europe. As Mesut Idriz, professor of Islamic civilization at the University of Sharjah, has noted, “Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s translations and original writings exerted influence not only within the Islamic world but also in medieval Europe.”

Prof. Idriz, also one of the co-authors, pointed out that medical historians pay particular attention to Hunayn’s work titled al-Masāʾil fī al-Tibb (Questions on Medicine for Students), which was translated into Latin under the title Isagoge (Johannitius). “This text served for centuries as an introductory medical manual in European universities,” he said. “Its wide circulation in the Latin scholarly world illustrates the important role that Islamic medical scholarship played in shaping the foundations of medical education in medieval Europe.”

Prof. Abdulkarim likewise described al-Masāʾil fī al-Tibb as a seminal work, calling it “one of the earliest and most influential didactic texts in Islamic medical history, written in a unique question-and-answer format that shaped medical education for centuries.” He emphasized that Hunayn was “not merely a transmitter of Greek medicine; he was one of the most significant intellectual bridges connecting classical knowledge with medieval European medicine.”

Hunayn’s legacy, Prof. Abdulkarim concluded, is a reminder that scientific progress has historically arisen from dialogue between civilizations rather than from the achievement of any single culture. “It demonstrates that the history of medicine is not solely the narrative of one civilization,” he said, “but rather the story of knowledge traveling across cultures and shaping global science.”

Full bibliographic information

Published on 05/04/2026 by University of Sharjah
Authors: Al-Zubi, D. H., Abdulkarim, M., Idriz, M., Fareh, S., & Al-Leheabi, S. (2025).
About: Translation and ophthalmology during the Abbasid Era: Hunayn bin Isḥāq’s ‘In the Eye, Two Hundred and Seven Issues’ as a model of medical scholarship.
Article name: Cogent Arts & Humanities, 12(1)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2025.2522116