Yoḥannan bar Sarapion Yūḥannā b. Sarābiyūn (8th/9th cent.) [Ch. of E.]
Medical writer of the late 9th (or less likely, late 8th) cent. He was the author of ‘The Great Compendium’ (in 12 books) and ‘The Small Compendium’ (in 7 books); the Syriac originals of both of these are lost (though a few short quotations are preserved in Bar Bahlul’s ‘Lexicon’). Both works were translated into Arabic, and ‘the Small Compendium’ was particularly influential: it was translated three times into Arabic, and twice into Latin. In Arabic only Books 5–7 survive (in the translation by Mūsā b. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥadīthī, (fl. ca. 930), but both Latin translations are preserved complete: the first, by Gerard of Cremona (12th cent.) was first printed in 1525, and the second, by Andreas Alpagus (who made considerable use of the first), was published in Venice in 1550.
Sources
- P. E. Pormann, ‘Yūḥannā ibn Sarābiyūn: Further Studies into the Transmission of his Works’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 14 (2004), 233–62.
- G. Troupeau, ‘Du syriaque au latin par l’intermédiaire de l’arabe: le Kunnash de Yuḥanna ibn Sarabiyun’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 4 (1994), 267–78.
- M. Ullmann, ‘Yuḥanna ibn Sarabiyun: Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungsgeschichte seiner Werke’, Medizinhistorisches Journal 6 (1971), 278–96.