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Classics and Ancient History

The Arabic translation of Galen's commentary on the Hippocratic Epidemics

The transmission of medical knowledge to the Islamic world and the development of clinical medicine

Introduction

The Epidemics of Hippocrates (fl. 430 BCE) is a collection of case notes by different authors in seven books. The material was compiled in its present form much later, but some of it probably originated as early as the fifth century BCE. The text constitutes a milestone in the history of clinical medicine. Galen (d. c. 216) wrote an extensive commentary on those parts he considered genuinely Hippocratic, i.e. Books 1, 2, 3 and 6. This commentary is only partially and badly preserved in the original Greek. Almost all of Book 2 and parts of Books 1 and 6 solely survive in an Arabic translation by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. c. 873).

The Warwick Epidemics project aims at editing and translating into English three books out of four of Galen's Commentary on Hippocrates' Epidemics: Book 1, for which large parts of the Greek original survive; Book 2, where no Greek is extant; and Book 6, which is partially lost in Greek. These three books represent ca. three quarters of Ḥunayn's Arabic translation and cover the entirety of those parts that are lost in Greek. In addition, textual analyses and comparisons of Books 1 and 6 with other translations will provide insights into the history of the Greek-Arabic translation movement and Ḥunayn's translation technique and terminology.

Project Team

In its first phase from 2008 to 2012, which focused on Books 1 and 2 and was funded by a Wellcome Trust project grant, the project team consisted of two post-doctoral research assistants, Uwe Vagelpohl and Bink Hallum, who worked under the supervision of Peter E. Pormann and Simon Swain. In the second phase, which started in 2012, Uwe Vagelpohl and Simon Swain attended to the completion of the work on Books 1 and 2. They were published in 2014 (Bk. 1) and 2016 (Bk. 2). From 2012 to 2019, Uwe Vagelpohl also edited and translated Book 6 of the commentary as a Wellcome History of Medicine Fellow. This final phase concluded wirth the publication of the final volume in 2022.

Publications

  • Hallum, Bink et al. "A New Manuscript: Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, MS Ayasofya 3592". In Pormann, Peter E., ed. Epidemics in Context. Greek Commentaries on Hippocrates in the Arabic Tradition. Scientia Graeco-Arabica 8. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012, 15–22.
  • Hallum, Bink. "The Arabic Reception of Galen's Commentary on the Epidemics". In Pormann, Peter E., ed. Epidemics in Context. Greek Commentaries on Hippocrates in the Arabic Tradition. Scientia Graeco-Arabica 8. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012, 185–210.
  • Pormann, Peter E. "Case Notes and Clinicians: Galen's Commentary on the Hippocratic Epidemics in the Arabic Tradition". Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 18/2 (2008): 247–284.
  • Pormann, Peter E., ed. Epidemics in Context. Greek Commentaries on Hippocrates in the Arabic Tradition. Scientia Graeco-Arabica 8. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012.
  • Vagelpohl, Uwe. "Cultural Accommodation and the Idea of Translation". Oriens 38/1–2 (2010): 165–184.
  • Vagelpohl, Uwe. "In the Translator's Workshop". Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 21/2 (2011): 249–288.
  • Vagelpohl, Uwe. "Galen, Epidemics, Book One: Text, Transmission, Translation". In Pormann, Peter E., ed. Epidemics in Context. Greek Commentaries on Hippocrates in the Arabic Tradition. Scientia Graeco-Arabica 8. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012, 125–150.
  • Vagelpohl, Uwe, ed. and tr. Galeni In Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum I commentariorum I–III versio arabica. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum. Supplementum Orientale V 1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014.
  • Vagelpohl, Uwe. "Dating Medical Translations". Journal of Abbasid Studies 2/1 (2015): 86–106.
  • Vagelpohl, Uwe with Simon Swain, ed. and tr. Galeni in Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum II commentariorum I–VI versio arabica. 2 vols. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum. Supplementum Orientale V 2. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.
  • Vagelpohl, Uwe. "The user-friendly Galen. Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and the adaptation of Greek medicine for a new audience". In Bouras-Vallianatos, Petros and Xenophontos, Sophia, ed. Greek Medical Literature and its Readers. From Hippocrates to Islam and Byzantium. London and New York: Routledge, 2018, 113–130.
  • Vagelpohl, Uwe, ed. and tr. Galeni in Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum VI commentariorum I–VIII versio arabica. 3 vols. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum. Supplementum Orientale V 3. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.

Further information