Qusta ibn Luqa

Qusta ibn Luqa was a Greek Melkite Christian born in Baalbek who was completely trilingual in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. Traveling to the Byzantine Empire to collect rare classical manuscripts, he moved to Baghdad, where he worked alongside Hunayn ibn Ishaq as one of the premier translators of the Abbasid translation movement.

Qusta translated Diophantus's Arithmetica, Heron's Mechanics, and treatises by Autolycus, Theodosius, and Galen. He also authored over sixty original medical, philosophical, and physical treatises, including his famous medical essay On the Difference between the Spirit and the Soul (De Differentia Spiritus et Animae), which became a standard text in medieval European universities.