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.
146
v
NOTES ON THE FOURTH DISCOURSE
Concerning the original Bukht-Yishu' I can find out nothing,
,
but it
may he supposed that he", like his son Jurjis, was attached to the great
hospital (JBimdristdn) and medical school of hh native town Jurtdir
Sabur. This once famous Persian city, of f
which hardly a trace now
Rawlinso^as the modern
remains, though its site has been identified by
Shah-abad, about mid-way between Dizful ttrfU Shiishtar, was originally
2
fouwded by Shapiir I, and named, according to Tabari Beh-az-Andew-
,
i-Shdpur, or " Shapiir's 'Better than Antioch,'" a name gradually
shortened to Gunde-Shapur, or, in its Arabic form, Junday-Sabiir.
*-'
It
was enlarged into a great city," says Rawlinson, " by his seventh successor
Shapiir II ' Dhu' l-Aktdf (A.D. 309-379). ..and during his reign
became the see of a bishop of the Nestorian Church which had been
instituted in Susiana a century before ; r and when Jundi-Sabiir soon
afterwards rose to be the chief city of the province, the seat of the
metropolitan, which had been formerly fixed at Ahwaz, or, as it is called
f
by the Syrians, ^eth Lapat 3 was transferred to it. The School of , Jundi-
Sabiir was renowned, during the reign of Anrisharwan (A.D. 531-578),
and the city continued, to the time of the
through the East a,nd West ;
Arab conquest, one of the great capitals of Susiana. It appears to have c
sunk before the rising greatness of Shiishtar in the thirteenth century ;
and it is little mentioned in Oriental History after that time."
On the destruction of the great Persian school of Edessa in A.D. 488-9
by order of the 4
Emperor Zeno many of its learned Nestorian professors
and physicians sought refuge from Byzantine fanaticism under the more
tolerant rule of the Sasanians at Jundi-Sabiir, and gave a fresh impulse
to its activity. During the Arab invasion of Persia (A.H. 15-^7;
A.D. 636-8) it surrendered on terms to the Muslims 5
, and its school
apparently continued unmolested until the early 'Abbasid period, when
the Caliph al-Mansiir (A.H. 136-158; A.D. 754-775), being grievously
ill, summoned Jurjis I, son of Bukht-Yishu' I, to Baghdad, where he
remained, greatly trusted and honoured, in spite of his refusal to forsake
the Christian for the Muhammadan faith, until A.H. 152 (A.D. 769),
when, being himself sick unto death, he obtained the Caliph's permission
to return home. From that time onwards until the middle of the eleventh
century some member of the family was always one of the chief phyficians
of the Court at Baghdad. Lengthy notif^'s of most of those
enumerated above, with lists of their medical and o{her works, are given
For such
by Qifti, Ibn Abi Usaybi'a and other medical biographers.
as do not read Arabic the information given by Wiistenfeld (pp. 14-18)
and Leclerc (i, pp. 95-103) will probably suffice. It is uncertain whether
the Bukht-Yishu' mentioned in the text Anecdote ( .XX^CII is
I) intended
to be the father or the son of Jibra'il. The former died twelve years
before al-Ma'miin's accession, while the latter''survived him thirty-seven
years.
1 Notes on a March from Zohdb to Khuzistdn in theyi.A'. Geogr. Soc. for 1839,
vol. ix, pp. 71-72. See also Layard's remarks in vol. xvi, p. 86, of the same Journal.
12 See Noldeke's Gesch. d. Pers. u. Arab, zur Zeit d. Sasaniden (Leyden, 1879),
pp. 40-4?.
3 See Noldeke, loc. cit,
* See Dr W. Wright's Syriac Literature, pp. 46-47.
5 See Baladhuri's Futthrfl-Bulddn (ed. de Goeje), pp. 382-385.