Ecclesiastical history

The two passages quoted by Elias of Nisibis refer to the years 765 and 768, and concern George Boktisho, the physician of the caliph al-Mansur. A more detailed version of the same two episodes is found in Bar Ebroyo's Chronicle (Bedjan 1890: 125-126; Budge 1932: 115-116), without any mention of the source. The very same passages are quoted by the Muslim physician and historian Isa Ibn Abi Usaibiah (1203-1270) in his 'History of the physicians', and ascribed to a certain 'Pethyon the Translator'. To him Usaibiah ascribes 11 more passages, all concerning physicians coming from the Boktisho family and ranging from the reign of al-Mansur (754-775) to the reign of the al-Mutawakkil (847-861). Graf (1947: 120-121) identified the author quoted by Usaibiah with 'Petyon the son of Job', a ninth-century Christian-Arab author known for his Arabic translations of Biblical books. Whether Usaibiah used the same work quoted by Elias of Nisibis and Bar Ebroyo, or an expanded version of it that ended up being ascribed to 'Petyon the son of Job' (maybe because of the homonymy with the original author) is difficult to ascertain. The identification of the Pethyon quoted by Elias with the eighth-century East-Syrian patriarch proposed by Baethgen (1884: 2) is proven wrong by Wright's objection (1894: 195) that the Catholicos Pethyon died in 740, whereas the passages by Pethyon quoted by Elias of Nisibis refer to the years 765 and 768. The name was apparently widespread, since in the same period three different people called Pethyon are attested just in the letters of the patriarch Timotheus I (Baudoux 1935; Berti 2009). Berti (2014: 26-32) discusses the possible identification of the author quoted by Elias of Nisibis with one of them, Pethyon of Elam, as well as his relation to the Pethyon quoted by Ibn Abi Usaibiah.