Ibn Abi Usaibia

Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa Muʾaffaq al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn Al-Qāsim Ibn Khalīfa al-Khazrajī (Arabic: ابن أبي أصيبعة‎‎‎; 1203–1270), commonly referred to as Ibn Abi Usaibia, was a Syrian Arab physician of the 13th century CE. He created a history of medicine organized as histories of notable physicians, a book about 700 pages long.

Ibn Abi Usaibia was born at Damascus, a member of the Banu Khazraj tribe. The son of a physician, he studied medicine at Damascus and Cairo. In 1236 he 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 ul-Aṭibbāʾ (Arabic: عيون الأنباء في طبقات الأطباء‎‎) 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 or Lives of the 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 vizier of Damascus. A second and enlarged version was produced by the same author, though it is uncertain whether the new version was made public in the lifetime of the author.

Editions

In 1884 an Arabic edition was published by August Müller (Königsberg, 1884). Today the Arabic text is online at AlWaraq.net and elsewhere. A full translation into English is at Tertullian.org.