In a rarely-cited treatise still preserved in the work of the medieval biographer, Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa, the famous ninth-century translator of Greek sciences into Arabic, Hunayn ibn Ishaq, reports on contemporary working conditions at the Abbasid court. In particular, he paints a vivid picture of the competition that raged amongst the members of the professional classes—in this case, the class of court physicians—and the kinds of intrigues in which they were willing to engage in order to promote themselves at court or merely secure a position there. The present article uses the account of this eyewitness and participant in such activities in order to illustrate more fully the conditions under which the Greek sciences were translated into Arabic and to suggest the possibility that the competition detailed here served as a motivation for such translation activities. The article also includes a full translation of Hunayn’s account from the original Arabic.