Ibn Abi Usaybia
- Died
- 668 AH
- Born in
- Damascus
Ibn Abi Usaybia (c. 600–668 AH / 1203–1270 CE) was a Syrian physician, oculist, and medical biographer based in Damascus and Cairo, best known for his biographical dictionary of physicians, Uyun al-Anba fi Tabaqat al-Atibba.
Early Life and Education
His full name was Muwaffaq al-Din Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn al-Qasim ibn Khalifah ibn Yunus al-Sa'di al-Khazraji, commonly known by the surname of his ancestor as Ibn Abi Usaybia. He was born in Damascus around 600 AH (1203 CE; other sources give 596 AH / 1200 CE or the late twelfth century CE) into a family of medical practitioners. His father was a practicing oculist in Damascus, and his paternal uncle served as head of the hospital for eye diseases.
Ibn Abi Usaybia received his early medical training from his father, specializing in ophthalmology, and studied philosophy under Radi al-Din al-Jili. He also studied botany and pharmacology under the botanist Ibn al-Baytar, whom he met in Damascus in 633 AH; the two formed a close association and traveled together into the Syrian desert to identify and collect herbs and medicinal plants.
Career and Students
In 634 AH (1236 CE), Ibn Abi Usaybia moved to Cairo to take up a post as an oculist at the Nasiri Hospital (al-Bimaristan al-Nasiri). While in Cairo, he further developed his practical medical and pharmaceutical expertise under the physician and pharmacologist al-Sadid Ibn Abi al-Bayan al-Isra'ili.
In the following year, he entered the service of the Ayyubid emir Izz al-Din Aydamur (also recorded as Aybak) as his personal physician in Salkhad (Sarkhad), located in the Hawran region of southern Syria, where he resided for the remainder of his life. Among those who studied medicine under his tutelage was the Christian physician and surgeon Ibn al-Qaff.
Scholarly Standing and Biographical Work
Ibn Abi Usaybia is best known for his extensive biographical dictionary Uyun al-Anba fi Tabaqat al-Atibba (Sources of Information on the Classes of Physicians), which he dedicated to the vizier Amin al-Dawla Abu al-Hasan ibn Ghazal al-Samiri. Organized into fifteen chapters, the work provides chronological and regional biographies of physicians, translators, and natural philosophers from ancient Greece, Rome, India, and the Islamic world—including Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Persian, and Maghrebi practitioners.
First drafted around 640 AH or 643 AH, the text was continuously augmented by the author with additional entries until 667 AH, shortly before his death. Later commentators have noted that the work preserves invaluable fragments from lost Greek, Syriac, and early Arabic medical sources, offering rare documentation of the scientific and social history of the Islamic world, though critics have remarked on the uneven quality of its literary style and its inclusion of excessive verse.
Death
Ibn Abi Usaybia died in Salkhad in Jumada al-Ula 668 AH (January 1270 CE; another report gives 1269 CE). Historical accounts report differing estimates of his age at death, with one tradition stating he was in his seventies and another stating he had lived past ninety years.
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List of Works
Uyun al-Anba fi Tabaqat al-Atibba is a biographical dictionary of physicians that provides biographical records of practitioners of medicine from antiquity through the Islamic Middle Ages. Composed in Damascus in 643 AH (1245/1246 CE), the work compiles accounts of distinguished physicians across successive generations, along with philosophers and sages engaged with medicine, recording their sayings, anecdotes, and book titles.