Moamyn (or Moamin) was the name given in Medieval Europe to an

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 ...

author of a five-chapter treatise on

falconry Falconry is the hunting of wild animals in their natural state and habitat by means of a trained bird of prey. Small animals are hunted; squirrels and rabbits often fall prey to these birds. Two traditional terms are used to describe a person ...

, important for early Europeans, which was most popular as translated by the

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 ...

Theodore of Antioch under the title ''De Scientia Venandi per Aves'' in 1240 to 1241. It also contained a chapter on hunting with dogs and chapters on other related subjects such as diseases of birds. There are about 27 Latin manuscript versions of Moamyn's work with two of them being illustrated throughout, with a well-known copy held in Vienna.

Identity

The true identity of Moamyn is a mystery. The name by which he was known in the medieval west is most likely the result of a corruption or simplification of the true pronunciation of the Arabic name. Based on this, among other reasons, François Viré has suggested that he is in fact

Hunayn ibn Ishaq Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-Ibadi (also Hunain or Hunein) ( ar, أبو زيد حنين بن إسحاق العبادي; (809–873) was an influential Nestorian Christian translator, scholar, physician, and scientist. During the apex of the Islamic ...

(809–873), physician of the

Abbasid Caliphate The Abbasid Caliphate ( or ; ar, الْخِلَافَةُ الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, ') was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Mutta ...

. Thus, Moamyn would be the deformation of the original Arabic ''Hunayn''. However, there are other theories.

Origins

The ''Kitāb al-mutawakkilī'' of the mid ninth century was thought to be Moamyn's treatise on falconry in the original Arabic, but was discovered not to be in the 1980s. It was translated into Castilian in 1252 under the title ''Libro de los animales que caçan''. Moamyn's work is largely based on the ''Kitāb al-ṭuyūr'' (كتاب الطيور), the Book of Birds (also known as the ''Kitāb dawari at-tayr'', the Book of flight cycles(patterns) of Birds), a more extensive work by al-Ghiṭrīf ibn Qudāmah al-Ghassānī from the early ninth century.

References

External links

Book of the Week
{{Authority control Falconry 9th-century Arabic writers 9th-century Arabs