The Syrian scholar Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq (809-873) translated Galen’s 2nd-century commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms into Arabic for a 9th-century audience of medical students. His translation was the first of over a dozen medieval Arabic medical commentaries which played a major role in the history of medicine. This paper will show that, while adopting the scientific genre of the commentary from the Greek, the Arab scholars did not imitate late-antique styles of writing, but rather developed their own rhetorical strategies to convincingly deliver their arguments to their Arabic audience. Insights in these strategies are invaluable for the study of medieval Arabic scientific writing in particular and historical pragmatics in general. The late-antique physician Galen (c.130-c.216 AD) used his own rhetorical methods to convincingly communicate his commentary to a late-antique audience, such as the use of first-person pronouns, the direct addressing of the reader, and the use of hedges. In his translation, Ḥunayn had to find a way to translate these strategies while also conveying the commentary in an intelligible way to his own audience; an audience that was used to different metadiscursive conventions than those common in late antiquity. Ibn Abī Ṣādiq (d.1068), who wrote one of the first Arabic medical commentaries, continued and developed Ḥunayn’s rhetorical techniques, which were then standardised among later authors. Through an analysis of the metadiscursive features in Ḥunayn’s and Ibn Abī Ṣādiq’s commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms, this talk will demonstrate first which techniques Ḥunayn employed to faithfully, yet clearly translate Galen’s source text, and second how some of these techniques return in later Arabic commentaries. For example, Ḥunayn adopts nearly doubles Galen’s use of first-person pronouns and direct addressing of the reader. Moreover, he consistently activises Galen’s passive constructions and adds endophoric markers, references to other places in the text, throughout his translation. Finally, Ibn Abī Ṣādiq’s commentary displays a similar personal style, with a frequent use of first person pronouns, continuous addressing of the reader, as well as an increased use of hedges and endophoric markers. The paper concludes that the Arabic physicians employed a personal, intimate writing style, perhaps reminiscent of oral teaching, to adapt a Greek scientific format to their own medieval Arabic audience.