al-Hawi fi al-Tibb
- Author died
- 313 AH
- Editions
- Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Turāth al-ʻArabī
al-Hawi fi al-Tibb (The Comprehensive Book on Medicine) is an extensive medical encyclopedia by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (d. 313 AH / 925 CE), compiling classical and early Islamic medical knowledge alongside clinical observations and pharmacology across all branches of medicine.
Composition and Compilation
Al-Razi reportedly devoted fifteen years of his life to gathering and drafting the material for the encyclopedia, incorporating excerpts from Greek, Syriac, Persian, Indian, and early Arabic medical authorities. He died before editing and arranging his working manuscripts into a finalized treatise. Following his death, the Buyid vizier Abu al-Fadl Ibn al-Amid acquired the draft papers from al-Razi's sister in Rayy for a large sum of money and convened al-Razi's former medical students to compile and order the sheets, which contributed to some structural unevenness in the surviving text.
Structure and Content
In classical bibliographical records, such as Ibn al-Nadim's al-Fihrist, the work is recorded under the title al-Jami' al-Hasir li-Sina'at al-Tibb and divided into twelve sections:
- Treatment of illnesses and patients ('ilaj al-marda wa-l-amrad)
- Preservation of health (hifz al-sihha)
- Bone-setting, splints, and surgery (al-jabr wa-l-jirahāt)
- Properties of drugs, foods, and medical substances (quwa al-adwiya wa-l-aghdhiya)
- Compound remedies (al-adwiya al-murakkaba)
- Medical craft and practice (san'at al-tibb)
- Pharmacognosy and drug descriptions—colors, tastes, and scents (saydanat al-tibb)
- Constitutions and the body (al-abdan)
- Weights and measures (al-awzan wa-l-makayil)
- Anatomy and the functions of organs (al-tashrih wa-manafi' al-a'da')
- Natural causes in medicine (al-asbab al-tabi'iyya)
- Introduction to medicine (al-madkhal ila sina'at al-tibb) in two discourses, covering medical terminology and foundations.
Ibn Abi Usaybi'a suggested that this twelvefold scheme may have reflected an early arrangement of the post-mortem drafts rather than the transmitted state of al-Hawi. The work proceeds head-to-toe, surveying diseases and their remedies. Al-Razi attributes each quotation explicitly to its original source—preserving fragments of earlier medical texts that are otherwise lost—and follows each section with his own practical assessments and clinical case records.
Reception, Abridgments, and Transmission
Ali ibn al-Abbas al-Majusi, author of Kamil al-Sina'a al-Tibbiyya, noted that al-Razi covered the preservation of health and disease management without omitting any subject, though he remarked that the work did not fully elaborate every procedural detail required by a practitioner. Marginal notes were written on it by Rashid al-Din Abu Sa'id ibn Ya'qub al-Masihi al-Qudsi (d. 646 AH), and it was abridged by the physician Ibn al-Dakhwar.
The encyclopedia was translated into Latin in 1279 CE under the title Liber Continens, becoming one of nine standard textbooks used in the medical curriculum at the University of Paris through the late fourteenth century. The Latin translation was printed in Venice in 1509 and 1542. A complete manuscript of the Arabic text is held in the El Escorial library, and the Arabic text was published in Hyderabad by Da'irat al-Ma'arif al-Uthmaniyya in twenty-three volumes between 1955 and 1963.
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