Charles of Anjou giving an Arabic manuscript to Faraj for translation, from a medieval illumination.
Faraj ben-S?lim (Arabic,??? ?? ???? ), Moses Farachi of Dirgent[1], Ferrarius, Franchinus was a Sicilian-Jewishphysician and translator; flourished in the second half of the thirteenth century. He was engaged by Charles IV, Duke of Anjou as translator of medical works from Arabic into Latin. In this capacity he rendered a great service to medicine by making in 1279 a Latin translation of Razi's medical encyclopedia, Al-Hawi (later printed in 1486, under the title Continens, with a glossary by the translator). The translation is followed, between the same covers, by "De Ex-positionibus Vocabulorum seu Synonimorum Simplicis Medicinæ", which Steinschneider supposes to form a part of the Continens. As a token of his esteem for the translator, Charles of Anjou ordered that on the original copy of the manuscript of the Continens (MS. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, No. 6912) the portrait of Faraj should be drawnbeside his own by Friar Giovanni of Monte Cassino, the greatest illuminator of his time.
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