Ali ibn Sahl spoke Syriac and Greek, the two sources of the medical tradition of Antiquity which had been lost by medieval Europe, and transcribed in meticulous calligraphy.
[6][7] Outside the rational sciences, as a convert from Christianity to Islam he was also involved in interreligious polemics, writing two works critical of his former religion, al-Radd ´alā l-Nasārā (The Refutation of the Christians) and Kitāb al-dīn wa-l-dawla (The Book of Religion and Empire), both of which having been published by Brill in 2016 in a single book, The Polemical Works of ʿAlī al-Ṭabarī.
[3] Rabbān received his educational bases in the medical field, natural sciences, calligraphy, mathematics, philosophy and literature from his father Sahl.
Ali ibn Sahl was fluent in Syriac and Greek, the two sources for the medical tradition of antiquity, and versed in fine calligraphy.
[11] Firdaws al-Hikmah or Paradise of Wisdom is one of the oldest encyclopedias of Islamic medicine, based on Syriac translations of Greek and Indian sources (Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, and others).It is divided into 7 sections and 30 parts, with 360 chapters in total.