Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 213

hospitals were not uncommon, we do
not know what proportion of the patients
would have been non-Muslim. An asso-
ciation with a hospital seems to have been
highly desirable for a physician, and some
teaching occurred in hospitals, especially
in Ba ∞ dād and later in Damascus and
Cairo, but most medical instruction was
probably acquired through private tutor-
ing and apprenticeship.
The association of the Umayyad caliph
al-Walīd I with the establishment of the
first hospital in Islam has been demon-
strated to be unjustified, and the formative
role of Gondē ª āpūr in their development
has been overemphasised. Available evi-
dence suggests that the first Islamic hos-
pital was founded in Ba ∞ dād by order
of Hārūn al-Ra ª īd. The most important
of the Ba ∞ dād hospitals was that estab-
lished in 372/982 by Aud al-Dawla and
we possess the fullest information about
the great Syro-Egyptian hospitals of the
6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries.
Following the death in 560/1165 of the
head of the Audī hospital in Ba ∞ dād,
Ibn al-Tilmī £ , several physicians left
Ba ∞ dād for Damascus and the Nūrī
hospital. One of Ibn al-Tilmī £ 's stu-
dents to emigrate was Ibn al-Murān (d.
587/1191), a Christian who converted to
Islam and found in alā al-Dīn a gen-
erous patron, enabling him to develop a
personal library said to contain 10,000
volumes. Ibn al-Murān's major writing,
K. Bustān al-aibbā wa-rawat al-aibbā , con-
sists of numerous quotations from earlier
authorities interspersed with his own com-
ments, somewhat in the style of al-Rāzī's
Hāwī but on a smaller and more organised
scale. The leading figure in the teaching
of learned medicine in Syria and Egypt in
the 7th/13th century was Muha ££ ab
al-Dīn Abd al-Raīm b. Alī, known as
al-Da ¶ wār (d. 628/1230), who had stud-
ied medicine with Ibn al-Murān and in

turn taught many students in Damascus,
where he was associated with the Nūrī
hospital. He established a madrasa which
was devoted solely to instruction in medi-
cine. The school opened in 628/1231,
about a month after al-Da ¶ wār died,
and it was still in existence in 820/1417
when it underwent repairs.
His two most famous students were
Ibn Abī Uaybia and Ibn al-Nafīs. Ibn
Abī Uaybia was born into a family of
Damascene physicians and in his day
was a noted oculist practicing at the Nūrī
hospital. Today his name is more read-
ily associated with his K. Uyūn al-anbā
fī abaāt al-aibbā , in which he gives the
biographies of over 380 physicians and
scholars. His work greatly expands the
earlier bio-bibliographic accounts given
by Ibn al-ifī.
Ibn al-Nafīs, usually referred to in Ara-
bic sources by his nisba al-ura ª ī, was
a noted jurist as well as a prolific writer
of medical tracts. He undertook an enor-
mous medical compendium called K.
al- · āmil fi 'l-ināa al-ibbiyya , which was
projected to extend to 300 volumes, of
which he completed only 80 (portions are
preserved in nine manuscripts). He also
wrote on ophthalmology and produced a
commentary on K. al-Masāil fi 'l-ibb by
unayn b. Isā.
While the earliest epitome of the ānūn
seems to have been that by al-Īlāī ( fl .
460/1068), a pupil of Ibn Sīnā, it was
not really until the late 6th/12th cen-
tury that a serious need was perceived
for aids to understanding the ānūn . The
Egyptian Jewish physician Ibn ⁄ umay,
who died in 594/1198, composed pos-
sibly the earliest commentary on the
ānūn . In the 7th/13th and 8th/14th
centuries, commentaries and epitomes
followed in rapid succession, and it was
this industry of glossing and condensing
the ānūn that assured the encyclopaedia