In his 1978 'Islamic Medicine', Manfred Ullmann underscored the serious terminological confusion about the Greek term φρενίτις in the Arabic sources*1*. According to Ullmann, the disease known in Hippocratic medicine as phrenitis was translated by Arabic authors into either birsām or sirsām, two Persian loan-words. Ulmann stated that some authors understood the two terms to designate different illnesses; al-Rāzī, however, used them interchangeably. Ullmann attributed the confusion of the two words to their frequent use in pre-Islamic poetry. Michael Dols*2* echoed Ullmann's remarks stating that Arabic translators did not create in this case a clear, shared nomenclature. More recently, Peter Pormann pointed out that the two terms were used ‘nearly synonymously’*3* in Arabic medicine to designate an acute illness with fever caused by an inflammation of the meninges. The present paper aims at rectifying our understanding of the usage of the terms birsām and sirsām in selected Arabic sources. The period under scrutiny ranges from Ḥunayn's translations of Galen (9th c. AD) up to Ibn al-Quff's commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms (13th c. AD). With the aid previously unpublished sources, I show how influential Arabic writers consistently used sirsām and birsām to designate two pathologies which displayed the same symptoms, but had different aetiologies. In particular, commentators since Ḥunayn used the two terms to discern between the affected parts when delirium and fever arose. I demonstrate that, contrary to what is commonly thought, Ḥunayn's understanding of phrenitis did not overlap with Galen's and I formulate a hypothesis on the reason for this discrepancy. *1*Ullmann, M. Islamic Medicine. Edinburgh University Press (1978). 29 *2*Dols, M. Majnūn: the Madman in Medieval Islamic Society. Oxford (1992). 57 *3*Pormann, P. "Theory and Practice in the Early Hospitals in Baghdād: al-Kaskarī on Rabies and Melancholy." Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 15(2003): 197-248. 217

It is well-known that Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā al-Rāzī (d. ca. 925) wrote in several medical genres, including encyclopaedia, case notes, aphorisms, Doubts about Galen, and self-help. Yet, al-Rāzī is not well-known as a medical commentator, despite the fact that medical commentary was an important genre in late antiquity as well as the medieval Islamic world. In a pathbreaking article, Franz Rosenthal drew attention to the fact that Arabic commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms preserved valuable fragments of al-Rāzī’s lost commentary on the Aphorisms. During a project to survey the entire Arabic commentary tradition on the Aphorisms, we have found over 80 fragments and quotations attributed to al-Rāzī. Some of these come from al-Rāzī’s Doubts about Galen, but the majority appear to stem from his lost commentary on the Aphorisms. This talk has a two-fold aim: to raise awareness about this lost text and give some preliminary findings about its nature, structure and historical significance; and to discuss two examples dealing with medical epistemology to illustrate a side of Rāzī’s scientific output that is virtually unknown.

In the post-classical period of Arabic philosophy and medicine, Aristotle's and Galen's views on pain, and its relation to the body and soul were mediated in large part by Avicenna's Canon of Medicine and Avicenna's On Soul. By the beginning of the thirteenth-century, the Canon, especially Canon 1 (Generalities, K. al-Kullīyāt) had begun to exert considerable influence on Arabic philosophy and medicine, inaugurated primarily by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's critical (or "verifying") commentary on Canon 1. In his commentary on Canon 1.3, Rāzī criticises how Avicenna and Galen understood the nature of pain and its relation to the body and soul. Rāzī's commentary on Canon 1 gained wide notoriety. His comments on pain in particular appear to have provoked ire of the erudite Melkite Christian physician Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Quff. In his commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms, Ibn al-Quff's commentary carries out an extended and extraordinarily detailed rebuttal of Rāzī's doctrine of pain and pleasure. This rebuttal takes Ibn al-Quff far from Galen's commentary on the Aphorisms. This exchange between these two great thirteenth-century thinkers illustrates how Avicenna's Canon as well as his philosophical works influenced the development of post-classical Arabic medicine. It also illustrates, however, how by the end of the thirteenth-century Fakhr al-Dīn's influence had spread beyond Transoxiana and Iran, and beyond philosophical, theological and legal scholarly circles, and had come to influence Arabic scholastic medicine in Transjordan and the Levant.

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.