Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa Muʾaffaq Ibn Khalīfa al-Khazrajī

Background

Ibn Abi Usaibia was born in 1203 in Damascus, Syria, a member of the Banu Khazraj tribe and the son of a physician.

Education

Ibn Abi Usaibia studied medicine at Damascus and Cairo.

Career

In 1236 Ibn Abi Usaibia was appointed physician to a new hospital in Cairo, but he surrendered the appointment the following year to take up a post given him by the ruler of Damascus in Salkhad near that city. He lived in Salkhad until his death. His only surviving work is Lives of the Physicians. In that work he mentions another of his works, but it has not survived. The title in Arabic ʿUyūn ul-Anbāʾ fī Ṭabaqāt al-Aṭibbāʾ is translatable loosely and expansively as "selected historical accounts of lives of physicians, organized in historical groups". The title is commonly translated into English as History of Physicians, Lives of the Physicians, or Classes of Physicians. The early chapters are almost wholly about the physicians of ancient Greece. The rest of the book is mostly about the physicians of medieval Islam. There are also chapters on Syriac and Indian physicians. A first version appeared in 1245-1246 and was dedicated to the Ayyubid physician and vizier Amīn al-Dawlah. A second and enlarged recension of the work was produced in the last years of the life of the author, and circulated in at least two different versions, as shown by the extant manuscripts.

Achievements

• Ibn Abi Usaibia created a history of medicine organized as histories of notable physicians, a book about 700 pages long.