Abū al-Khayr al-Ḥasan ibn Suwār ibn Bābā ibn Bahnām, called Ibn al-Khammār (born 942), was an East Syriac Christian philosopher and physician who taught and worked in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

. He was a prolific translator from

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

into

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

and also wrote original works of philosophy, ethics, theology, medicine and meteorology. Ibn al-Khammār has an entry in the biographical dictionary of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa. He was born in November or December 942 (c. AH 330) in Baghdad. He became a surgeon at the ʿAḍudī hospital in Baghdad, where he taught Ibn al-Ṭayyib and Ibn Hindū. According to Ẓahīr al-Dīn al-Bayhaqī, writing over a century later, Ibn al-Khammār spent his last years in Khwārizm and

Ghazna Ghazni ( prs, غزنی, ps, غزني), historically known as Ghaznain () or Ghazna (), also transliterated as Ghuznee, and anciently known as Alexandria in Opiana ( gr, Αλεξάνδρεια Ωπιανή), is a city in southeastern Afghanistan ...

, where he converted to Islam. His death can be dated in or after 1017. The manuscript Arabe 2346 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France contains an

translation of

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

's ''

Organon The ''Organon'' ( grc, Ὄργανον, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name ''Organon'' was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics. The six ...

'' copied from a copy made by Ibn al-Khammār, itself copied from a copy made by his teacher, Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī. Arabe 2346 contains various

scholia Scholia (singular scholium or scholion, from grc, σχόλιον, "comment, interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of t ...

on the ''Organon'' by the philosophers of Baghdad, including some by Ibn al-Khammār. In the debates between the '' mutakallimūn'' (Islamic theologians) and the ''falāsifa'' (Islamic philosophers) concerning whether God was known by intuition or by inferential reasoning, Ibn al-Khammār took the side of the ''falāsifa''. Most of his works are lost, but the titles of two are known: ''Maqāla fī l-tawḥīd wa-l-tathlīth'' (Treatise on the Unity and Trinity) and ''Kitāb al-tawfīq bayna arāʾ al-falāsifa wa-l-Naṣāra'' (The Concordance of the Views of the Philosophers and the Christians). Nothing is known about them beyond what can be inferred from their titles. Ibn al-Khammār translated from Syriac into Arabic the ''

Categories Category, plural categories, may refer to: Philosophy and general uses *Categorization, categories in cognitive science, information science and generally *Category of being * ''Categories'' (Aristotle) *Category (Kant) * Categories (Peirce) * ...

'', ''

On Interpretation ''De Interpretatione'' or ''On Interpretation'' ( Greek: Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, ''Peri Hermeneias'') is the second text from Aristotle's '' Organon'' and is among the earliest surviving philosophical works in the Western tradition to dea ...

'' and '' Prior Analytics'' of

; the ''

Isagoge The ''Isagoge'' ( el, Εἰσαγωγή, ''Eisagōgḗ''; ) or "Introduction" to Aristotle's "Categories", written by Porphyry in Greek and translated into Latin by Boethius, was the standard textbook on logic for at least a millennium after his ...

'' and two books of the ''History of Philosophy'' of Porphyry; the ''Meteorological Phenomena'' of

Theophrastus Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routle ...

; and the '' Book of Allīnūs''. His translations were praised by al-Tawḥīdī for their elegance. Ibn al-Khammār was revered by his contemporaries. Ibn al-Nadīm, who knew him, praises him as a logician. ʿAlī ibn Riḍwān, the Egyptian physician, recorded that Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna kissed the ground before him out of respect. His fame was such that the philosopher Avicenna expressed an intention to meet him, which ultimately went unfulfilled.

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* * * {{Authority control 942 births 11th-century deaths Year of death uncertain Church of the East writers 11th-century Arabic writers 10th-century physicians 10th-century philosophers People under the Buyid dynasty Physicians of the medieval Islamic world