Career
He was engaged by Charles I of Naples 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 al-Razi"s medical encyclopedia, First Rate (at Lloyd's)-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 expositionibus 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 (Mississippi Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Number 6912) the portrait of Faraj should be drawn beside his own by friar Giovanni of Monte Cassino, the greatest illuminator of his time.
Steinschneider believes that to Faraj should also be ascribed the Latin translation of Masarjawaih"s treatise on surgery (Mississippi Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Number 7131), said to have been made by a certain Ferrarius.
