Abū al-Khayr al-Ḥasan ibn Suwār ibn Bābā ibn Bahnām, called Ibn al-Khammār (born 942), was an

East Syriac Christian Syriac Christianity (, ''Mšiḥoyuṯo Suryoyto'' or ''Mšiḥāyūṯā Suryāytā'') is a branch of Eastern Christianity of which formative theological writings and traditional liturgies are expressed in the Classical Syriac language, a varia ...

philosopher and physician who taught and worked in

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

. He was a prolific translator from Syriac into

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

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 Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa Muʾaffaq al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn Al-Qāsim Ibn Khalīfa al-Khazrajī (‎; 1203–1270), commonly referred to as Ibn Abi Usaibia (also ''Usaibi'ah, Usaybea, Usaibi`a, Usaybiʿah'', etc.), was a physician from S ...

. 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 (, ), historically known as Ghaznayn () or Ghazna (), also transliterated as Ghuznee, and anciently known as Alexandria in Opiana (), is a city in southeastern Afghanistan with a population of around 190,000 people. The city is strategica ...

, where he converted to

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

. His death can be dated in or after 1017. The manuscript Arabe 2346 in the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

contains an

translation of

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

's ''

Organon The ''Organon'' (, 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, who maintained against the ...

'' copied from a copy made by Ibn al-Khammār, itself copied from a copy made by his teacher,

Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī ''Yahya'' (), also spelled '' Yehya'', is an Arabic male given name. It is an Arabic form of the Aramaic given name ''Yohanan'' () of John the Baptist in Islam, who is considered a prophet. For this reason, Yahya is a comparatively common name in ...

. Arabe 2346 contains various

scholia Scholia (: scholium or scholion, from , "comment", "interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript of ancient a ...

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: General uses *Classification, the general act of allocating things to classes/categories Philosophy *Category of being * ''Categories'' (Aristotle) *Category (Kant) *Categories (Peirce) *Category (Vais ...

'', ''

On Interpretation ''On Interpretation'' (Ancient Greek, Greek: , ) is the second text from Aristotle's ''Organon'' and is among the earliest surviving philosophical works in the Western philosophy, Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language an ...

'' and '' Prior Analytics'' of

; the ''

Isagoge The ''Isagoge'' (, ''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 death. It was compose ...

'' and two books of the ''History of Philosophy'' of

Porphyry Porphyry (; , ''Porphyrios'' "purple-clad") may refer to: Geology * Porphyry (geology), an igneous rock with large crystals in a fine-grained matrix, often purple, and prestigious Roman sculpture material * Shoksha porphyry, quartzite of purple c ...

; the ''Meteorological Phenomena'' of

Theophrastus Theophrastus (; ; c. 371 – c. 287 BC) was an ancient Greek Philosophy, philosopher and Natural history, naturalist. A native of Eresos in Lesbos, he was Aristotle's close colleague and successor as head of the Lyceum (classical), Lyceum, the ...

; 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 Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq an-Nadīm (), also Ibn Abī Yaʿqūb Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Warrāq, and commonly known by the ''nasab'' (patronymic) Ibn an-Nadīm (; died 17 September 995 or 998), was an important Muslim ...

, who knew him, praises him as a logician.

ʿAlī ibn Riḍwān Ali ibn Abi Talib (; ) was the fourth Rashidun caliph who ruled from until his assassination in 661, as well as the first Shia Imam. He was the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Born to Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib an ...

, 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 Ibn Sina ( – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( ), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian peoples, Iranian ...

expressed an intention to meet him, which ultimately went unfulfilled.

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Bibliography

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