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On the Wikipedia page for Ophthalmology they have the following diagram

with the annotation

Anatomy of the Eye, 1200 A.D.

The diagram is recognizable as an eye. I am curious what the labels say, and what the surrounding text says. I don't know how to read the text, nor is it something I can easily copy-paste into some translator. It isn't clear where Wikipedia got the image, but the file name was Cheshm manuscript.jpg. When I Google Cheshm manuscript I don't get any reliable sources (e.g. tumblr pages with the image and a stock image site).

What do the text and labels say around this historic diagram of an eye?

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    $\begingroup$ Unfortunately, I cannot translate it as well but some words are familiar. This is an Arabic text. Cheshm means Eye but in Persian/Urdu/Hindi. So it appear like a nickname by the Wikipedia writer not the actual name of the book. However, one can trace the author of this book on Wikipedia "Hunayn ibn Ishaq" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunayn_ibn_Ishaq $\endgroup$
    – ACR
    Commented May 30, 2022 at 16:59
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    $\begingroup$ Check the text "Hunayn ibn Ishaq enriched the field of ophthalmology. His developments in the study of the human eye can be traced through his innovative book, "Book of the Ten Treatises of the Eye". This textbook is the first known systematic treatment of this field and was most likely used in medical schools at the time. Throughout the book, Hunayn explains the eye and its anatomy in minute detail; its diseases, their symptoms, their treatments." $\endgroup$
    – ACR
    Commented May 30, 2022 at 17:00
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    $\begingroup$ See if you can get hold his "Book of the Ten Treatises of the Eye". $\endgroup$
    – ACR
    Commented May 30, 2022 at 17:01
  • $\begingroup$ Galen, Try posting it in SE Linguistics, they have an Arabic tag and someone might be able to translate it. linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/arabic $\endgroup$
    – ACR
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 4:49
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    $\begingroup$ The text is in arabic, my native language, I will translate it. $\endgroup$
    – SPARSE
    Commented Jun 18, 2022 at 21:03

1 Answer 1

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The following is a summary and translation.

The manuscript OP had is what the detailed eye looks like according to Hunayn ibn Ishaq an influential Nestorian Christian translator, scholar, physician, and scientist.

Summary: In his manuscript, Hunayn believes that the eye is made of many parts and that not all of its parts are sight, but rather moisture similar to ice. As for the rest of the moisture that is in the eye and the layers and everything else other than that, each one of them was created for the benefit of the icy moisture aforementioned.

The icy moisture according to Hunayn is pure white, bright, round, hard to rotate, but it has a width, and it is in the middle of the eye, like a point we could imagine lying in the middle of a ball.

Hunayn sees this icy moisture as being in between two moistures, the one behind is similar to melted glass called vitreous, and the other in front is similar to egg white which he called an egg.

He then states that behind the vitreous moisture there are three layers: the first layer contains the vitreous moisture and is similar to the retina (meaning the retinal veil), and the second layer is behind the first and is similar to the placenta and is called the chorionic layer, and the third layer behind the second follows the bone and it is hard and strong, and is called the rigid membrane.

In the image displayed by OP, Hunayn mentions

and I am still a beginner with regards to the benefits of every single moisture and its cleanliness which I described in beginning of asserting its structure, its being, its flexion, and its places, and I had proceeded by informing you that the skin moisture is in the middle of the eye and that behind it is one and a third of layers, and its frame is one moisture and a third of layers $\color{red}{\text{red dot}}$.

He then states the importance of the moisture

With the help of God, we will be explaining $\color{red}{\text{the functions of the previous structures}}$, which are the three layers that we mentioned before, so we say that every member of the body must be nourished because it must be missing something through the decomposition of natural heat from within... (the rest of the text is not shown in the image but he proceeds to explain some source of nourishment in the blood.)

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