ABŪ 'I-FARAḠ 'ABDALLAH IBN AT-TAYYIB. - Also called: ibn at-Tib and in Latin Benattibus, he was a Nestorian monk and priest of Iraq. He flourished in the first half of the 11th century (d. in 1043) and was secretary of the patriarch of his sect, Elias I (1029-49). He had also been secretary of John VII of Nazuk, elected in 1013 (Amr et Sliba, ed. Gismondi, 1897, p. 56 of the Latin version).
His literary activity in Arabic was considerable, and he is cited by Avicenna and by Averroes. Bar Hebraeus mentions his works, but Abū 'I-Barakāt, a Coptic Monophysite priest (13th-14th century), lists more of them. He made a vast collection of Eastern and Western canons, of which a complete list is found in Arabic ms. 57 of the Medicean Library, reproduced in the catalogue of the same by S. Ev. Assemani together with all of A.'s works at pp. 93-96. These canons appear in ms. Vat. ar. 153, which does not contain the author's name because it is mutilated, but Abū 'I-Barakāt gives a summary of them in his catalogue as a work of A. Moreover the same collection is under A.'s name in Vat. Borgiano 199. It is known under the title of Fiqh an-Nasrāniyyah (Law of Christianity). Mss. Vat. ar. 36 and 37 contain A.'s commentaries on the Old and New Testament, commentaries which bear the title The Paradise of the Christians. Vat. Borg. 231 contains
A.'s commentaries on the Gospels, Vat. ar. 35 the commentaries on Psalms 33-60 and Vat. ar. 157 a treatise on marriage and divorce. These last two works are mentioned neither by Abū 'I-Barakāt nor by Bar Hebraeus; and from the commentaries on the Gospels the Jacobites, according to Abū 'I-Barakāt, have removed the passages that contain Nestorian doctrines. A. also wrote a treatise on inheritance (Vat. ar. 150 and 160), one on unity and trinity and one on the Divine Persons (Vat. ar. 145 from f. 48 onward). A treatise of his on Nestorian doctrine against those who affirmed that Mary was the mother of God is in Vat. ar. 115. Elias, metropolitan of Nisibis, wrote an apologetic disputation and before circulating it submitted it to A. for approval. This prolix approval is read in Vat. ar. 180, f. 120 ff. A. "commented on Aristotle's books of Logic and Philosophy, and on Galen's books of Medicine," as Bar Hebraeus says.
Of all the works only the commentary on the Psalms saw the light (Cairo 1908). According to Vat. Borg. 250 and the manuscript of the Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Diatessaron (v.) was translated from Syriac into Arabic by A. A. Ciasca (v.) too, who published the mutilated codex Vat. ar. 14 (13th-14th century) completing it with the aforementioned Vat. Borgiano 250 (15th century), supports this opinion (A. Ciasca, Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmoniae arabice, Rome 1888). But the leaves of the Library of the Catholic University of Beirut prove, according to some, that the Arabic version is earlier than A. (cf. L. Cheikho, in Journ. As., 9th series, 10 [1897], p. 301, and al-Mafrīq, 4 [1901], pp. 100-103).
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