The Syrian-Persian family Bakhtīshū` served rulers in the Islamic world from the eighth century to the eleventh century.  Bakhtīshū` is a Syro-Persian name formed from the phrase “Jesus has redeemed.”  In the fifth and sixth centuries, persons named Bakhtīshū` were metropolitan bishops in the East Syrian Ecclesiastical Province of Beth Garmai, Diocese of Karka d’Beth Slokh (present-day Kirkuk, Iraq).[1]  In 765, Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur summoned Jūrjis ibn Jibrāīl ibn Bakhtīshū` from Jundishapur, in southwest Persia, to Baghdad.  Jūrjis, a Christian, was then a well-known physician and medical author heading a hospital (bimaristan) in Jundishapur.[2]  An academy at Jundishapur is thought to have been a refugee for Syrian Christian scholars fleeing Byzantine persecution in the late fifth and sixth centuries.  Whether the Bakhtīshū` of Jundishapur were related to the Bakhtīshū` of Karka d’Beth Slokh isn’t clear.  In any case, nearly continuously over the next three centuries, Bakhtīshū` from Jundishapur served as physicians to Abbasid caliphs and other Islamic rulers.

Stories about the Bakhtīshū` underscore courtly wit and verbal play.  Contemporary Christian teaching limited sexual relations to sex within marriage between one man and one woman.  Jūrjis ibn Jibrāīl ibn Bakhtīshū`, the first Bakhtīshū`to serve as physician to an Abbasid caliph, adhered to that teaching:

“I understand you have no wife,” said the Caliph. “I have an old and ailing wife,” answered the physician {Jūrjis}, “who cannot come and join me here.” He then left the Caliph’s presence and went to church. The Caliph meanwhile ordered his eunuch Sālim to select three attractive Greek slave girls and take them to Jūrjis with three thousand dirhams. When Jūrjis returned to his lodgings, `Isā ibn Shahlā told him what had happened. He showed the slaves to his master, who disapproved of the matter and said: “O Devil’s disciple, why did you bring these into my apartment? Go and return them to their owner.” He rode with `Isā to the Caliph’s palace and gave the slaves back to the eunuch. When al-Mansūr heard of this, he called Jūrjis and asked: “Why did you return the slaves?” Said Jūrjis: “They cannot stay in the same house with me, for we Christians do not marry more than one woman; as long as she is alive, we must not marry another.” This attitude pleased the Caliph, who immediately ordered that Jūrjis be given access to his favorite and legitimate wives and become their physician. His fame and position rose even higher.[3]

The narrative line connecting Jūrjis saying “I have an old and ailing wife” to his leaving the Caliph’s presence and going to church highlights the story’s point: to describe Jūrjis’ distinctive, Christian martial practice.  Jūrjis’ grandson, Jibra’īl ibn Bakhtīshū` ibn Jūrjīs, who was also a Christian, nonetheless took concubines.  Timothy I, Patriarch of the Church of the East (780-823), considered Jibra’īl’s taking of concubines to be a grave sin:

The Patriarch said calmly {to Jibra’īl}: “I fear the wrath of Christ for you.”  Jibra’īl’s reply, “Oh pederast,” which was unheard by Timothy, shocked the priests who were standing nearby.  When the Patriarch was apprised of Jibra’īl’s words, he went into the church and prayed that God would punish the physician.

Presently, Jibra’īl came out to leave.  As his horse came to the New Bridge {in Baghdad}, the animal threw him to the ground.  Suffering from a broken right hand and foot as a result of the fall, Jibra’īl was brought in a litter back to the monastery by his mother.  Ignoring his pleas to send for a physician, Jibra’īl’s mother prayed and faster for three days.  At the end of the three days, Timothy anointed Jibra’īl with oil.  Thus, the ailing physician made his peace with the Patriarch and his health was restored.[4]

This story, while clearly tendentious and fabulistic, probably drew upon contemporary, relevant eighth-century church records.  Jibra’īl was extremely wealthy and politically powerful.  Bitter conflict between the Patriarch Timothy and Jibra’īl over the latter’s taking of concubines is plausible.[5]  That conflict also plausibly colored the story of  Jibra’īl’s grandfather’s sexual fidelity.

Before accepting treatment from a physician, a caliph had the physician examined.  The examination not only probed the physician’s knowledge, but also his appearance, manner of speech, and verbal wit.   In 787, Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd was suffering from headaches.  Seeking effective relief, he summoned from Jundishapur “Bakhtīshū` the Great, the son of Jūrjis.”  Entering Caliph al-Rashīd’s presence, Bakhtīshū`saluted him in Arabic and Persian.  Yahya ibn Khalid, a member of the illustrious Persian Barmikids family, and the Caliph’s leading physicians were unable to engage Bakhtīshū` at his lofty level.  Declared one of the physicians to the Caliph:

O Emir of Faithful, there is none among us who can converse with this man, for he epitomizes philosophy. He and his father and the entire family are all philosophers.[6]

The solution to this discursive problem was ingenious:

Al-Rashīd then ordered one of his servants to bring Bakhtīshū` the urine of a riding animal, in order to test him. When this had been done, the physician exclaimed: O Emir of the Faithful, this is not human urine.” Said Abū Quraysh: “You are wrong, this is the urine of the Caliph’s favorite wife.” Said Bakhtīshū: “Let me tell you, O honourable Shaikh, that no human being ever produced this; if what you say is true, then perhaps that favorite has become a beast.” The Caliph then asked him: “How did you know it is not human urine?” The physician replied: “It has not the consistency, the color nor the smell of human urine.” The Caliph asked: “Under whom did you study?” — “Under my father, Jūrjis.” The medical men said: “His father’s name was indeed Jūrjis, and there was no one like him in his time. Ja`far al-Mansūr used to honor him greatly.” The Caliph then turned to Bakhtīshū` and said: “What do you advise feeding to whoever passed this urine?” — “Good barley.” The Caliph laughed heartily and ordered Bakhtīshū` to be given a beautiful and precious robe and a large sum of money. Then he said: “Bakhtīshū` is to be my chief physician and to be obeyed by all the others.”[7]

Diagnosing through examining a patient’s urine was a central medical practice in the ancient Islamic world.   So too were dietary prescriptions.  In his diagnosis of the animal urine, Bakhtīshū` not only displayed medical acumen, but also skillful riposte.

Courtly wit is well-mixed with technical knowledge in stories about the Bakhtīshū`.  According to another story, one of Caliph al-Rashīd’s favorite women had her hands frozen outstretched above her head after sexual excitement.  Physicians failed to unfreeze her arms with ointments and unguents.  Jibra’īl, who as noted above had especially wide-ranging sexual experience for a Christian, cured this unusual ailment with bio-psychiatric insight:

The Caliph had the girl brought in. When Jibrā’īl saw her, he ran to her, bent his head and took hold of the edge of her garment, as if he was going to uncover her.  The girl was stupefied and, thanks to her shame and emotion she recalled the use of her limbs and threw her hands down to catch the edge of her robe.

The girl was thus cured.  Jibrā’īl then provided a technical description of the ailment and his cure:

During sexual intercourse this woman had a soft mixture pouring into her members, resulting from all the excitement and the expansion of heat; now, as the excitement caused by the sexual act stops suddenly, the rest of this mixture froze inside all her nerves, and nothing could dissolve it but movement again. I tried to cause her heat to spread, and so the rest of the mixture dissolved.[8]

That technical description represents knowledge no more true than most statistical regressions that appear in current scholarly economics literature.  Knowledge, however, is valued within a particular field of social assets, relations, and practices.  As physicians to Abbasid caliphs, the illustrious Bakhtīshū` of Jundishapur were eminent in both medical-technical knowledge and elite culture.

*  *  *  *  *

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Notes:

[1] Wilson (1974) pp. 23-4.  In thirteenth-century Damascus, the etymology of Bakhtīshū` was thought to be “servant of Jesus.”  HP p. 240.  That shows the etymology shifting from theological to personal characterization.

[2] HP pp.  236-7.  Wilson (1974) p. 24 notes that Ibn Abi Usaibia and al-Qifti are the leading biographers of the Bakhtīshū`.   The only surviving written work of a Bakhtīshū` is apparently that of Abū Sa`īd `Ubayd Allāh ibn Jibrā’īl `Ubayd Allāh ibn Bakhtīshū` ibn Jibrā’īl ibn Bakhtīshū` ibn Jūrjis ibn Jibrā’īl ibn Bakhtīshū`.  Abū Sa`īd died a little after 1058.   His surviving works include the Manafi’ al-Hayawan (Advantages Derived from Animals), Ar-rauda at-tibbiyya (The Medical Garden), and a treatise “On love as a disease.” See Meyerhof (1928).  The nature and extent of the academy and hospital at Jundishapur are a matter of some controversy.  See Dols (1987).  For a good review of physicians at Jundishapur, see Taylor (2010).

[3] HP p. 238.  Muslims could licitly have multiple wives.  The Caliph apparently was pleased that he did not have to worry that Jūrjis would engage in covert sex with women in the Caliph’s harem.  Ibn Abi Usaibia attributes the story to Pethion the Dragoman, a translator (probably Syriac Christian) whom he describes as having unpolished knowledge of Arabic.  HP p. 392. Another story similarly attests to Jūrjis’ Christian piety:

The Caliph exclaimed: “O Jūrjis, believe in Allāh and become a Muslim, and then I shall guarantee you Paradise.” Jūrjis answered: “I will die believing in the faith of my forefathers {Christianity}, and I wish to be where they are, be it Paradise or the Inferno.” The Caliph smiled at these words and said: “I have felt truly well from the time you came here to this very day.  I have been rid of all the maladies that used to plague me.”

HP p. 239.  This story is also attributed to Pethion the Dragoman.  Pethion seems to have been particularly interested in the Christian Bakhtīshū`.

[4] Wilson (1974) pp. 63-4, translating from Maris, Amri, et Slibae de patriarchis nestorianorum commentaria, edidit ac latine reddidit Henricus Gismondi (1897), Amri I, p. 74 (Arabic), p. 65 (Latin), from Mari ibn Sulaiman (Maris ibn Salomonis), Turris (Book of the Tower), Ch. 5, Sec. 5.  Mari ibn Sulaiman was a mid-twelfth century Christian historian and polemicist who apparently drew upon Christian church sources from the seventh and eighth centuries.  See Petersen(1994) p. 65.

[5] Timothy described Jibrā’īl as “the door to our glorious king {Caliph al-Rashid}” and as his “protector.”  Jibrā’īl contributed a large sum of money to fund one of Timothy’s projects. See Wilson (1974) pp. 55-61.  On Jibrā’īl’s wealth, see HP pp. 250-3.

[6] HP p. 242.

[7] HP p. 242.  The beast was probably a mule.

[8] HP p. 244.  Ancient Islamic physicians understood psycho-somatic effects.  For example, Ibn Abi Usaibia tells of a merchant who, while sleeping, was bitten by a poisonous snake.  The merchant’s companion told him not to worry because the bite he felt was just a thorn.  The merchant’s pain subsided.  Later, the companion told the merchant the truth about the snake-bite.  The consequences, according to Ibn Abi Usaibia:

The man was instantly seized with a violent pain in his leg, which spread within his body until it approached the heart. He fainted and his condition grew steadily worse, until he died. The reason was that fanciful thoughts and psychic processes exercise a strong influence upon the body; when the merchant realized the the harm done to him had been caused by a snake bite, his emotions were strongly affected, and the remainder of the poison which lingered in that place started to spread through his body, killing him when it reached the heart.

HP p. 696.  See also the similar story about a man who fell from a high place when drunk at HP p. 695.

References:

Dols, Michael W. 1987.  “The Origins of the Islamic Hospital: Myth and Reality.”  Bulletin of the History of Medicine, v. 61, n. 3 (Fall) pp. 367-90.

HP: Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah, Ahmad ibn al-Qasim. English translation of History of Physicians (4 v.) Translated by Lothar Kopf. 1971. Located in: Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 294.  Online transcription.

Meyerhof, Max.  1928.  “An Arabic Compendium of Medico-Philosophical Definitions.” Isis, v. 10, n. 2 (June) pp. 340-9.

Petersen, William Lawrence. 1994. Tatian’s Diatessaron: its creation, dissemination, significance, and history in scholarship. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Taylor, Gail Marlow. 2010.  “The Physicians of Jundishapur.” e-Sasanika 11.

Wilson, Boydena Robertine. 1974. The Bakhtishu’: Their Political and Social Role uder the ‘Abbasid Caliphs (A.D. 750-1100).  New York University, Ph.D.,  Medieval History.

Tagged: Ibn Abi Usaibia

The Instruction of Amenemope (Egyptian), the Book of Proverbs (Hebrew), and Hippocrates’ Aphorisms (Greek) have survived from more than 2400 years ago to the present.  While these collections of maxims, proverbs, and aphorisms have specific attributions, wise sayings historically have been highly mobile across cultures and authorities.

In ninth-century Baghdad, Hunayn ibn Ishaq wrote a collection of aphorisms of philosophers and scholars.  Among those aphorisms were a set of sayings inscribed on philosophers’ rings:

• The stone of Hippocrates’ signet-ring bore the inscription: “A patient who feels a desire has, in my opinion, better chances than a healthy person who feels no desire for anything.”
• The seal of Socrates’ ring was engraved with the words: “Whoever lets his mind be carried away by his passion is dishonored.”
• The seal of Plato’s ring was engraved with the words: “It is easier to move that which is at rest than to stop that which is moving.”
• The stone in Aristotle’s ring was engraved with the inscription: “He who admits ignorance of what he does not know is more learned than he who affirms what he knows.”
• The stone in Galen’s ring was engraved with the inscription: “He who conceals his malady will never be cured.” [1]

These sayings don’t highlight a prominent feature of the corresponding philosopher’s life or thought.  Moreover, the sayings cannot be found in the corresponding philosopher’s writings.  Such attributions apparently were a Persian literary device for conveying wisdom.[2]  The ancient Greek authorities invoked suggest that the leading ancient Greek authorities in Sassanid Persia were the same as those in Western thought today.  Nonetheless, attribution of a saying to a particular ancient sage has often been whimsical in wisdom literature.

In another section of Hunayn’s text, Aristotle speaks a stream of wisdom to a king within a Persian courtly fable.  The king had placed his son under Plato’s tutelage, but the son had a poor mind.  Aristotle, in contrast, quickly memorized Plato’s philosophy and literary discourse.  Presented to the king’s court to display his learning, the king’s son failed to produce any learning and collapsed into Plato’s arms.  Aristotle, stepping forward in ragged clothes, delivered a lengthy discourse covering all of Plato’s philosophy and science. The fable ends with Aristotle speaking a stream of wisdom to the king and court:

I am Aristotle the son of Philip, the orphan serving Nitaforos, the son of the great king. I have learnt to praise and worship God the Just, the First Cause. O my hearers, men are distinguished by their minds, not by their origin. I learnt from Plato the Sage that philosophy is the fountainhead of the sciences and the arts, the source of all understanding and the mind’s attainments. Penetrative thought leads to sound opinion, patience paves the way to one’s goal, and pleasant speech perpetuates friendship in the heart. Humility is the means to success, good manners beautify our lives and perfect our joys. Science is dignity, and logic enhances our importance and honor. Honesty is the key to our relations with others, and modesty augments love. Forgiveness purifies our actions, and virtue leads to masterly performance. Justice conquers our enemies and wisdom wins us many supporters. Pity tends the heart and mercy is the essence of goodness. Benevolence is true dignity and giving is the hallmark of brotherhood. Charity is virtue and kindliness is worthy of imitation. … [3]

Much of this wisdom can be traced to a Persian text translated into Arabic early in the ninth century.[4]  A closely related section of text has been traced to the Zoroastrian Mobed Mihr Adharjushnasp, probably writing in the Sassanid Empire under Khosrau I (Anushirwan) in 531-579.[5]  Ancient Greek characters transmitted both Greek wisdom and Persian wisdom.

Wisdom isn’t bound to specific authorities or contained within political boundaries. The Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope shares a section with the Hebrew Book of Proverbs.  Hippocrates’ Aphorisms was probably studied at the Academy of Gondishapur in Persia in the sixth and seventh centuries.  Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s anecdotes and aphorism of ancient sages almost surely included Persian material — the philosophers’ ring inscriptions and the story of Aristotle and the king’s son as good and bad students of Plato — as well material from the Greek tradition of Alexander romance (pseudo-Callisthenes).  Al-Ansari’s work, Adab al-falasifa, was probably a compilation that included some of Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s work, some of Hunayn’s son’s work, and some of al-Rayhani’s work.[6]  It was translated into Hebrew and Spanish in the thirteenth century, and subsequently into Latin and Ethiopian.[7]  Wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers in medieval Europe came through cultures from North Africa to Persia.

Communication networks much less technologically advanced than the Internet have in the long run circulated wisdom widely.  That shared wisdom has been continually embedded in new contexts and put to particular local uses.

*  *  *  *  *

Relevant work: The Sharing Ancient Wisdoms project promises to collect, analyze, and make available online historical collections of ancient wisdom sayings.

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Notes:

[1] HP pp. 55, 91, 99, 113, 170.  Ibn Abi Usaibia gives various titles for Hunayn’s work containing the sayings: “Anecdotes of Philosophers and Savants,” “Aphorisms of Philosophers and Physicians,” “Anecdotes of Philosophers and Physicians,” “Anecdotes of Great Philosophers and Physicians,” “Anecdotes of Great Philosophers,” “The Aphorisms of the Learned Philosophers and Maxims of the Ancient Scholars” and “The Book of Unique Reports about the Philosophers and Savants and the Habits of the Ancient Teachers.”  Philosophers, savants, physicians, scholars, and teachers were all closely associated.  The various titles may imply a work of several sections. Hunayn’s son Ishaq’s similar work includes 16 such ring inscriptions, but the inscriptions differ in order and attribution.  al-Ansari’s Adab al-falasifa includes twenty-six ring inscriptions.  That section was apparently transmitted to al-Mubashsir ibn Fatik’s Mukhtar al-hikam and to the Spanish and Hebrew translations of Adab al-falasifa.  al-Rayhani’s earlier Jawahir includes anonymously ten of these twenty-six sayings.  See Zakeri (2004) p. 180.  Ibn Abi Usaibia, who cites ibn Fatik’s Mukhtar al-hikam explicitly and repeatedly, attributed the ring sayings to Hunayn.  Ibn Abi Usaibia more generally commonly includes sayings attributed to the physician-scholar for whom he is giving an account.

[2] Swain (2006) p. 410 states the ibn al-Washsha’s tenth-century Kitab Al-Muwashsha (“Book of Brocade”) included such ring inscriptions. in a description of courtly etiquette.  Hunayn’s ninth-century record of such inscriptions probably comes from a Persian source, according to Zakeri (2004) p. 180.  Adrados (2009) p. 274 describes these sayings as involving “arbitrary attributions to various philosophers.”  That’s a generally recognized pattern in wisdom literature.  The prologue to al-Ansari’s Adab al-falasifa includes Hunayn stating that he is translating the text from Greek (see Adrados (2009) p. 15).  However, that’s apparently not true for all of Hunayn’s text.  The ring inscriptions include at least one Christian figure (Gregory) and one Arab-Islamic figure (Lokman).

[3] HP pp. 120-4.  The stream of aphorisms placed in Aristotle’s mouth continues much longer.

[4] Twenty of the inscriptions are also found in ‘Ali b. ‘Ubayda al-Rayhani’s Jawahir al-kalim, which translates sayings from Persian into Arabic.  Zakeri (2004) p. 182-3, Zakeri (2007).

[5] Adab al-falasifa (“Aphorisms of the Philosophers”), written by al-Ansari in the eleventh century and attributed to Hunayn ibn Ishaq, apparently contains much of Hunyan’s work.   So too does al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik’s eleventh-century book, Mukhtar al-hikam (“Choice Maxims and Best Sayings”).  Both contain a section of sayings associated with an unknown figure Mihraris or Mahadharijis.  Zakeri (1994) identified that section with work of the Persian Mobed Mihr Adharjushnasp.

[6] Zakeri (2004) pp. 185-90.  HP, p. 387,  list among the works of Ishaq ibn Hunayn, “The Habits of the Philosophers and Interesting Reports about Them.” Zakeri (2004) p. 179, translates Ibn Abi Usaibia’s reference to this title as “Teachings of the philosophers and their apophthegms.”

[7] The Spanish translation is titled Libro de los buenos proverbios.  Bandak (2007) surveys available manuscript sources and provides a critical text.

References:

Adrados, Francisco Rodríguez, and Joyce Greer. 2009. Greek wisdom literature and the Middle Ages: the lost Greek models and their Arabic and Castilian translations. Bern: Peter Lang.

Bandak, Christy, and Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī. 2007. Libro de los buenos proverbios: estudio y edición crítica de las versiones castellana y árabe. Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo.

HP: Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah, Ahmad ibn al-Qasim. English translation of History of Physicians (4 v.) Translated by Lothar Kopf. 1971. Located in: Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 294.  Online transcription.

Swain, Simon. 2006. “Beyond the Limits of Greek Biography: Galen from Alexandria to the Arabs,” in Brian McGing and Judith Mossman (eds.), The limits of ancient biography. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales.

Zakeri, Mohsen. 1994. “ʿAlī ibn ʿUbaida ar-Raiḥānī: A Forgotten Belletrist (adīb) and Pahlavi Translator.” Oriens, vol. 34, pp. 76-102.

Zakeri, Mohsen. 2004. “Ādāb al-falāsifa: The Persian content of an Arabic collection of aphorisms.” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph, vol. 57, pp. 173-190.

Zakeri, Mohsen. 2007.  Persian wisdom in Arabic garb: ʻAlī b. ʻUbayda al-Rayḥānī (d. 219/834) and his Jawāhir al-kilam wa-farāʾid al-ḥikam. Leiden ; Boston: Brill.

Tagged: Ibn Abi Usaibia