A Literary History of Medicine: The ʿuyūn Al-Anbāʾ Fī ṭabaqāt Al-Aṭibbāʾ Of Ibn Abī Uṣa - Paperback

by Emilie Savage-Smith (Editor), Simon Swain (Editor), Geert Jan Van Gelder (Editor)

An online, Open Access version of this work is also available from Brill.

A Literary History of Medicine by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270) is the earliest comprehensive history of medicine. It contains biographies of over 432 physicians, ranging from the ancient Greeks to the author's contemporaries, describing their training and practice, often as court physicians, and listing their medical works; all this interlaced with poems and anecdotes. These volumes present the first complete and annotated translation along with a new edition of the Arabic text showing the stages in which the author composed the work. Introductory essays provide important background. The reader will find on these pages an Islamic society that worked closely with Christians and Jews, deeply committed to advancing knowledge and applying it to health and wellbeing.

Author Biography

Emilie Savage-Smith, FBA, was Professor of the History of Islamic Science, University of Oxford. Publications include A New Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, I: Medicine (2012) and, with Y. Rapoport, Lost Maps of the Caliphs (2019)

Simon Swain, FBA, is Professor of Classics, University of Warwick. Publications include Hellenism & Empire (1996), Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon's Physigonomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (2007), Economy, Family and Society from Rome to Islam (2013).

Geert Jan van Gelder, PhD Leiden 1982; Lecturer in Arabic, University of Groningen, 1975-1998; Laudian Professor of Arabic, University of Oxford, 1998-2012. Fellow of the KNAW and the British Academy; author of many publications on Classical Arabic literature.

Contributors: Ignacio Sánchez, N. Peter Joosse, Alasdair Watson, Bruce Inksetter, Franak Hilloowala