Tag: Antiquity Middle Ages & Islam
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Ibn Rushd (Averroes), medieval polymath
It is hard to know what to make of someone who has written books on philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, law, and linguistics. In our time this would have been impossible. Not so in medieval Andalusia, where Ibn Rushd, now best known under his Latinized name of Averroes, never missed a day reading or writing…
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Bimarstan al-Mansouri
Mona Youssef Cairo, Egypt Around 1248 AD, when Islam was at its prime and the Nile was wide, and its seven delta branches coursed through the land with a heavy network of connecting channels in place of the two branches left today, there was the Bimaristan al-Mansouri, with water channels from the Nile running through the hospital…
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Claudius: The Caesar never meant to be emperor
Abigail Cline ApplerAugusta, Georgia, United States Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (10 BC – AD 54) was Roman emperor from AD 41 to 54. During his reign, he completed the Roman conquest of Britain, expanded construction projects across the Empire, and quelled numerous coups, one of which involved his own wife. Though considered the most…
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Ibn Sīnā cures a prince who thinks he is a cow
Alan WeberDoha, Qatar Sifting through literature we recover strange grains of medical truth. The twelfth century poet Nizámí-i-‘Arúdí relates the following story about the celebrated physician Ibn Sīnā or Avicenna (AD 980–1037): One of the princes of the House of Búya was attacked by melancholy, and was in such wise affected by the disease that…
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Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi
Ramin SamSan Francisco, California, United States While Europe languished in the Middle Ages, the Islamic world sustained and contributed to the scientific and mathematic knowledge accumulated by the Greeks. One of the most influential of these scientists was Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, otherwise known as Rasis or Rhazes. Born in Rey (near present-day Teheran) in 865,…
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Abulcasis, the pharmacist surgeon
Fadlurrahman ManafSurabaya, Indonesia Abu Al-Qasim Khalaf Ibn Al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi (AD 936–1013 AD), also known in the West as Abulcasis, was one of the most renowned surgeons of the Muslim era.1 Born in Zahra, six miles northwest of Cordova, he studied there, taught, and also practiced medicine and surgery.2 In addition to his knowledge of medicine…