In the present book, Oliver Kahl offers, for the first time, a complete, annotated English translation of Ibn Juljul’s Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ wa-l-ḥukamāʾ, one of the earliest Arabic texts of its kind. Ibn Juljul’s work, completed in the year 987 CE in Córdoba, is essentially a collection of biographical essays on ancient and medieval physicians, scientists and philosophers, interspersed with numerous anecdotes and containing a highly instructive, relatively long section on ‘Andalusian sages’. The work represents a most crucial source for our understanding of the evolution and the development of medicine and philosophy in Muslim Spain, drawing also on a number of otherwise unattested Latin-into-Arabic translations, and abounding moreover in burlesque literary embellishments.

In the present book, Oliver Kahl offers a complete, first-time English translation of Ibn Juljul's Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ wa-l-ḥukamāʾ, a highly unusual Arabic biographical dictionary of ancient and medieval physicians and philosophers, completed in Córdoba in 987 CE.

Ibn Zuhr (or Avenzoar) of twelfth-century Seville was the most important physician of Muslim Spain. His family boasted six generations of physicians, and also included midwives, jurists, poets, and viziers. His Kitab al-taysir, a compendium of therapeutics, was translated into Latin and Hebrew; its Latin version, Liber Teisir, served as a companion book to the Colliget, the Latin translation of Kitab al-kulliyat, a largely theoretical book of the philosopher-physician Ibn Rushd (Averroes). The rabbi-physician Maimonides quoted extensively from Ibn Zuhr and considered him "unique in his age and one of the great sages." But Ibn Zuhr was not just a keen observer of patients and a dispenser of remedies: buried within his generally dry narrative are candid recollections and views on a variety of subjects and of his society. And his medical recipes could be compared to current forms of alternative medicine. Together, his holistic approach to medicine and his spontaneous vignettes make him one of the most refreshing physicians of any age. This account of the life and legacy of Ibn Zuhr, the first of its kind, reveals the man and his world, his importance in his own times, and his relevance to our world today. Against a modern culture of often impersonal, bureaucratized, and costly health care, Ibn Zuhr's embodiment of the wisdom of the ages and his role as healer-priest can be an inspiration.

An online, Open Access version of this work is also available from Brill. A Literary History of Medicine by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270) is the earliest comprehensive history of medicine. It contains biographies of over 432 physicians, ranging from the ancient Greeks to the author’s contemporaries, describing their training and practice, often as court physicians, and listing their medical works; all this interlaced with poems and anecdotes. These volumes present the first complete and annotated translation along with a new edition of the Arabic text showing the stages in which the author composed the work. Introductory essays provide important background. The reader will find on these pages an Islamic society that worked closely with Christians and Jews, deeply committed to advancing knowledge and applying it to health and wellbeing.

The Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies provides a comprehensive survey on science in the Islamic world from the 8th to the 19th century. Across six sections, a group of subject experts discuss and analyze scientific practices across a wide range of Islamicate societies. The authors take into consideration several contexts in which science was practiced, ranging from intellectual traditions and persuasions to institutions, such as courts, schools, hospitals, and observatories, to the materiality of scientific practices, including the arts and craftsmanship. Chapters also devote attention to scientific practices of minority communities in Muslim majority societies, and Muslim minority groups in societies outside the Islamicate world, thereby allowing readers to better understand the opportunities and constraints of scientific practices under varying local conditions. Through replacing Islam with Islamicate societies, the book opens up ways to explain similarities and differences between diverse societies ruled by Muslim dynasties. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for both established academics and students looking for an introduction to the field. It will appeal to those involved in the study of the history of science, the history of ideas, intellectual history, social or cultural history, Islamic studies, Middle East and African studies including history, and studies of Muslim communities in Europe and South and East Asia.

Gerrit Bos (Ph.D. 1989) is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne. He has published extensively in the fields of Jewish studies, Islamic studies, and medieval science and medicine in Arabic and Hebrew texts. In July 2023, he celebrated his 75th birthday. On this occasion, his colleagues and students presented him with a Festschrift containing over twenty original papers. They deal with various topics belonging to his wider fields of interest ranging from the Ancient Orient, Jewish and Islamic theology and philosophy, medicine and natural sciences in medieval Islamicate and European countries, to Romance philology and linguistics.

The Kitāb Naʿt al-Ḥayawān is the earliest of a group of illustrated manuscripts dealing with the characteristics of animals and their medicinal uses. The present study considers both the confluence of textual traditions within this work and the stylistic and iconographic relationships of its illustrations, which make it a key witness to early thirteenth-century Arab painting. After a re-evaluation of previous approaches, emphasis is placed on relating image to text, on stylistic affiliations, and on the modalities of production, supported by technical analyses undertaken for the first time. In elucidating the particular context of this unique manuscript, the study contributes to our understanding of a critical period in the development of Middle Eastern painting and art.