Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 211

therapeutics. His compatriot Ibn Ru ª d
wrote K. al-Kulliyyāt , which became one
of the most influential medical writings
from Spain. It remains to be investigated
whether Islamic medicine in Spain devel-
oped with less dependence upon the ideas
of Ibn Sīnā than elsewhere. Available evi-
dence suggests that the ānūn of Ibn Sīnā
had little influence in Irā, Syria and
Egypt until the second half of the 6th/12th
century, when Ibn al-Tilmī £ , a physi-
cian at the Audī hospital in Ba ∞ dād
who died in 560/1165, wrote a marginal
commentary in a copy he transcribed (in
part from Ibn Sīnā's autograph copy) of
the ānūn . The influence of the ānūn is
detectable in the K. al-Mu ¶ tārāt fi 'l-ibb
written in Mawil in 560/1165 by Ibn
Hubal. In Persia, the ānūn's influence is
evident earlier, for the Persian handbook
‹ a ¶ īra- yi ‡ w ārazm ª āhī by ⁄ ur ¡ ānī,
dedicated to the ‡ w ārazm ª āh fi ub
al-Dīn Muammad (490-521/ 1097-127),
is highly dependent upon the ānūn .
Both al-Rāzī and Ibn Sīnā also wrote
essays on individual topics. Al-Rāzī wrote
an influential monograph on smallpox and
measles, though the earliest essay on the
subject was by ‚ ābit b. urra. Amongst
al-Rāzī's other essays was one on colic
( K. al-ūlan ¡ ) and one criticising Galen's
medical philosophy ( K. al- · ukūk alā
⁄ ālīnūs ). Some of his case histories are
contained in his K. al-āwī , but many
more (nearly 900) were recorded and
assembled posthumously by his students
under the title K. al-Ta ¡ ārib. Ibn Sīnā's
medical monographs included essays on
colic, on cardiac drugs and on bloodlet-
ting, as well as a didactic medical poem
( Ur ¡ ūza fi 'l-ibb ) that was especially popular
( judging from the large number of extant
manuscripts and commentaries, including
one by Ibn Ru ª d). The 4th/10th-century
writings of Isā b. Sulaymān al-Isrāīlī,
particularly that on fevers, were widely

read, as were the writings of his pupil, the
Tunisian physician Ibn al- ⁄ azzār. The
court physician to Abd al-Ramān III,
Abu 'l-āsim Zahrāwī, composed at Cor-
dova an encyclopaedia of 30 topics enti-
tled K. al-Tarīf li-man a ¡ iza an al-tanīf
that had particular influence through its
final topic, which was devoted to surgery.
In the second half of the 4th/10th cen-
tury, A ¶ awaynī Bu ¶ ārī, a student of a
pupil of al-Rāzī, composed the earliest
medical compendium in Persian, Hidāyat
al-mutaallimīn fi 'l - ibb . The general Arabic
textbook, K. al-Muāla ¡ āt al-burāiyya , by
Amad b. Muammad al-abarī, court
physician to the Būyid ruler Rukn al-
Dawla is preserved in many manuscript
copies and merits further attention from
historians, while several of the treatises
by the court physician to the Abbāsid
caliphs al-Mutadī and al-Mustanir,
Saīd b. Hibat Allāh (d. 495/ 1101),
deserve detailed attention, especially his
K. al-Mu ∞ nī fī tadbīr al-amrā and his med-
ical-philosophical essay Fī ¶ al al-insān.
In the 5th/11th century an acrimonious
debate occurred between two important
physicians. Alī b. Riwān was a self-
taught physician, burdened by an enor-
mous ego and a quick temper. He was
appointed chief physician by the Fāimid
caliph al-Mustanir, and attained great
political power in Egypt, where he also
wrote several treatises including K. Daf
maārr al-abdān bi-ar Mir , a discourse on
climatological features of Egypt and their
relation to public sanitation and disease,
particularly plague. When Ibn Bulān,
a Nestorian Christian from Ba ∞ dād
educated under the leading physician of
the day, arrived in Fusā in 441/1049
and challenged Ibn Riwān's position,
an exchange of ten increasingly vitriolic
essays took place. The debate ostensibly
centred upon an issue in Aristotelian biol-
ogy, but was in fact motivated by enmity