Background
Sulayman ibn Hassan ibn Juljul was born c. 944 in Córdoba, Andalusia (now in Spain). Nothing more is known about his personal life.
سليمان بن حسان ابن جلجل
Pharmacologist physician scientist author
Sulayman ibn Hassan ibn Juljul was born c. 944 in Córdoba, Andalusia (now in Spain). Nothing more is known about his personal life.
Ibn Juljul’s course of studies is known through his autobiography, preserved by Ibn al-Abbar. He studied medicine from the age of fourteen to twenty-four with a group of Hellenists that had formed in Córdoba around the monk Nicolas, and was presided over by the Jewish physician and vizier of 'Abd al-Rahman III, Hasday ibn Shaprut.
Ibn Juljul served as the personal physician of Caliph Hisham II. The famous pharmacologist Ibn al-Baghunish was his disciple.
Among Ibn Juljul’s works is Tabaqat al atibbct wa’l-frukamff (“Generations of Physicians and Wise Men”). It is the oldest and most complete extant summary in Arabic - except for the work on the same subject written by Ishaq ibn Hunayn, which is inferior to that of Ibn Juljul - on the history of medicine. It is of particular interest because Ibn Juljul uses both Eastern sources (Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, Abfl Ma'shar) and Western ones. The latter had been translated into Arabic from Latin at Córdoba in the eighth and ninth centuries and include Orosius, St. Isidore, Christian physicians, and anonymous authors who served the first Andalusian emirs. The work has frequent chronological mistakes, especially when it deals with the earliest periods, but it never lacks interest.
The Tabaqat contains fifty-seven biographies grouped in nine generations. Thirty-one are of oriental authors: Hermes I, Hermes II, and Hermes III, Asclepiades, Apollon, Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Democritus, Ptolemy, Cato, Euclid, Galen, Al-Harith al-Thaqafi, Ibn Abi Rumtha, Ibn Abhar, Masarjawayhi, Bakhtishul, Jabril, Yuhanna ibn Masawayhi, Yuhanna ibn al-Bitriq, Hunayn ibn Ishaq, al-Kindi, Thabit ibn Qurra, Qusta ibn Luqá, al-RázI, Thabit ibn Sinán, Ibn Waslf, and Nastás ibn Jurayh. The rest of the biographies are of African and Spanish scholars, who generally are less well-known than the Eastern ones. Since he knew many of the latter and possibly attended some of them, there is no reason to question the details given concerning their behavior or illnesses. The remarks on these topics are not real clinical histories but transmit details (allergic asthma, dysentery, and so on) that give a clear idea of life in Córdoba in the tenth century.
Ibn Juljul also provides interesting information about the oldest Eastern translations into Arabic, in the time of Caliph ‘Umar II, when he states that the latter ordered the translation from Syriac of the work of the Alexandrian physician Ahran ibn A‘yan.
Tafsir asma’ al-adwiya al-mufrada min kitdb Diyusqurldus, written in 982, may concern a copy of Dioscorides’ Materia medica. In it is a text, quite often copied, on the vicissitudes of the Arabic translation of the famous Greek work. Maqála fi dhikr al-adwiya al-mufrada lam yadhkurhá Diyusqurldus is a complement to Dioscorides’ Materia medica. Maqála fl adwiyat al-tiryaq concerns theriaca. Risálat al- tabyinfi ma ghalata fihi hafl al-mutatabbibln probably dealt with errors committed by quacks.
Ibn Juljul may be the author of the De secretis quoted by Albertus Magnus in his De sententiis antiquorum et de materia metallorum, which is attributed to a certain Gilgil.
Sulayman ibn Hassan ibn Juljul was one of the most renowned physicians of his time. Of particular significance among the many books, he wrote on medicine is his history of physicians, which gives an excellent account of the views of medicine and physicians in the Islamic world at this time. He is also remembered as the author of many works on medicine and the personal physician of the caliph.
