Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
2. Some renowned later
Physicians
a comparison between their texts and that
of Ibn Abī Uaybia shows how he either
copies them, very often literally, or sum-
marizes them, and how this mass of raw
material was amplified by successive addi-
tions; the biographies are arranged by
country and by generation ( abaāt ). The
work appeared in two redactions: a major
and a minor. The latter was completed in
640/1242 and, with the addition of new
material drawn in part from the Tarī
al-ukamā of Ibn al-ifī, it produced the
major recension (667/1268). From the
two redactions a not very careful copyist
produced a re-written version after the
author's death.
Ibn Abī Uaybia
Muwaffa al-Dīn Abu 'l-Abbās
Ahmād b. al-āsim b. alīfa b. Yūnus
al- azra ¡ ī Ibn Abī Uaybia was a
physician and bibliographer whose pat-
ronymic probably derives from the fact
that one of his ancestors had a deformed
hand. He belonged to a family of physi-
cians and was born in Damascus, after
590/1194. He studied under the prin-
cipal teachers of his time, notably Ibn
al-Bayār, who taught him botany; with
his father (d. 649/1251) and al-Rabī (d.
631/1233) he studied medicine, which he
practised in the Nūrī hospital in Damas-
cus and the Nāirī hospital in Cairo, and
then (634/1236) entered the service of the
amīr Izz al-Dīn Aybak al-Muaamī at
Sar ad, where he died in 668/1270.
He wrote various works on medicine
which are now lost, but which are men-
tioned incidentally in his Uyūn or by
his biographers; among them are: Iābat
al-muna ¡¡ imīn, al-Ta ¡ ārib wa 'l-fawāid,
ikāyāt al-aibbā fī ilā ¡ āt al-adwā and
Maālim al-umam . He is also the author of
numerous poems; but he owes his fame
to his Uyūn al-anbā fī abaāt al-aibbā , a
collection of 380 biographies which are of
inestimable value for the history of Arabic
science, in spite of a number of confusions,
some long series of verses which have
nothing to do with the main theme, and
the one-sidedness of the choice of subjects:
he provides no mention of persons such as
Ibn Nafīs, who, like him, was a pupil of
Ibn al-Da wār (d. circa 628/1230), but
whom he disliked. He based his work on
the bibliographical productions of his pre-
decessors (Ibn ul ¡ ul for example), and
( J. Vernet)
Ibn Bulān
Al-Mu tār (or Yuwānīs = Johannes) b.
al-asan b. Abdūn b. Sadūn Ibn Bulān
was a Christian physician and theologian
of Ba dād. He was the foremost disciple
of the Christian priest, philosopher and
physician, Ibn al-ayyib, and Ibn Bulān
himself was certainly a Nestorian cleric
and probably a priest. He used to teach
medicine and philosophy in Ba dād, but
left his native city in Ramaān 440/Janu-
ary 1049 for a journey which took him
by way of Raba, Ruāfa, Aleppo, Anti-
och, Laodicea and Jaffa to Cairo, where
he arrived in umādā II 441/Novem-
ber 1049. In Aleppo he was honoured by
the Mirdāsid governor Muizz al-Dawla
imāl b. āli, and he advised him on
the healthiest location of a hospital which
was to be built there; the governor also
authorized him to regulate the worship of
the Christians, but these last disliked the
rules which he made. In Cairo, he became
the target of the hostility of his Egyptian
colleague, Ibn Riwān, and there ensued
Search WWH ::




Custom Search