Jabril ibn Bukhtishu

Jabril ibn Bukhtishu was an influential physician of the eighth and ninth centuries from the Bukhtishu family, a dynasty of Church of the East Christian doctors associated with the Academy of Gondishapur. He spoke Syriac, though much of his medical writing was composed in Arabic. The grandson of Jirjis ibn Jibril, he served first as physician to Ja'far al-Barmaki and later to the Abbasid caliphs Harun al-Rashid, Al-Amin and Al-Ma'mun. In 805 he successfully treated one of Harun al-Rashid's slaves, which earned him the directorship of Baghdad's major hospital, the one that bore the caliph's name. He is credited with commissioning translations of Galen and other Greek authors through figures such as Iyob of Edessa and Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and he wrote works on the characteristics of animals, on medicine and psychological phenomena, and a description of animals, though little of his writing survives intact. He died in 828 or 829 and was buried in the Monastery of St. Sergios in Ctesiphon.