Ibrahim ibn Yuhanna

Byzantine Bureaucrat, Translator, and Author

Ibrahim ibn Yuhanna

Born| c. 950s

likely Antioch, Hamdanid emirate of Aleppo
(modern-day Antakya, Hatay, Turkey)

Died| c. 1030s

likely Antioch, Byzantine Empire
(modern-day Antakya, Hatay, Turkey)

Academic work
Main interests| Translation, Religion
Notable works| Life of Christopher

Ibrahim ibn Yuhanna (Arabic: إبراهيم بن يوحنا) was a Byzantine bureaucrat, translator, and author from Antioch in the late 10th and early 11th centuries.[1][2][3] He held the title of protospatharios and is often identified by this title in Arabic sources. Little is known for certain about his life, but he recounts in the Life of Christopher that he was a child in Antioch in the time of Patriarch Christopher and just before, meaning the late 950s and early 960s.[4] He evidently found success in the imperial bureaucracy after the Byzantines conquered Antioch in 969, given his elevated title. The Life describes events in the time of Patriarch Nicholas II (1025–1030), so Ibrahim must have lived at least to the very late 1020s.

The Life of Christopher is the only extant work authored by Ibrahim. It was originally composed in both Greek and Arabic, but only the Arabic version survives.[4] On the other hand, it seems that the bulk of Ibrahim's scholarly work was devoted to Arabic translations of Greek theological texts. He is known to have translated homilies by Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom; a portion of the Divine Names of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; and panegyrics for the evangelists Luke and John from the Menologion of his contemporary Symeon the Metaphrast.[2][5] He may also have been involved in administering imperial efforts to translate the Constantinopolitan liturgy into Syriac for use in the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, as indicated by a reference to "Abraham the king's scribe" in a 1056 Syriac Triodion manuscript in the British Library (BL Or. 8607).[6] However, there is no evidence that Ibrahim himself translated any texts into Syriac.

## References

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1. ^ Graf, Georg (1947). Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. pp. II:45–48.
2. ^ a b Nasrallah, Joseph (1983). Histoire du mouvement littéraire dans l’eglise melchite du Ve au XXe siècle. Leuven: Éditions Peeters. pp. III:1:289–305.
3. ^ Lamoreaux, John. "Ibrāhīm ibn Yūḥannā al-Anṭākī". Christian-Muslim Relations 600 - 1500. Brill.
4. ^ a b Zayat, Habib (1952). "Vie du patriarche melkite d'Antioche Christophore (†967) par le protospathaire Ibrahim b. Yuhanna: Document inédit du Xe siècle". Proche-Orient chrétien. 2: 11–38, 333–366.
5. ^ Treiger, Alexander (2019). "Greek into Arabic in Byzantine Antioch: ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Faḍl's 'Book of the Garden' (Kitāb ar-Rawḍa)". In Chitwood, Z; Pahlitzsch, J (eds.). Ambassadors, Artists, Theologians: Byzantine Relations with the Near East from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries. Mainz: Veröffentlichungen des WissenschaftsCampus Mainz. p. 224.
6. ^ Brock, Sebastian (1990). "Syriac Manuscripts Copied on the Black Mountain, near Antioch". In Schulz, Regine; Görg, Manfred (eds.). Lingua restituta orientalis. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 62, 66–67.

*[c.]: circa