Tarikh al-Bimaristanat fi al-Islam
- Author died
- 1365 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Ra'id al-'Arabi
Tarikh al-Bimaristanat fi al-Islam (The History of Bimaristans in Islam) is a historical treatise on the development, administration, and institutions of Islamic hospitals (bimaristans) by the Egyptian physician and historian Ahmad Isa (1293–1365 AH / 1876–1946 CE) . The book surveys the history of hospitals across Islamic lands from the rise of Islam until the establishment of the modern Abu Za'bal Hospital in the suburbs of Cairo in 1825 CE .
Publication and Manuscripts
The book was published in Damascus by Jam'iyyat al-Tamaddun al-Islami, which allocated its proceeds to charitable initiatives , and appeared in print in Cairo in 1357 AH / 1938 CE . An authorial draft manuscript of the work is preserved in the al-Zahiriyya Library in Damascus under manuscript number 7317 in the medicine and pharmacy collection .
Structure and Scope
The work is organized into two main parts:
- Part One (al-Bab al-Awwal): Examines the origin and institutional structure of bimaristans, their physicians, and operational expenditures . It opens with an explanation of the Persian term bimaristan (a compound of bimar, meaning sick or afflicted, and stan, meaning place or house, later shortened in usage to maristan) and discusses medicine among the Arabs at the inception of Islam . It then details the internal arrangement of hospitals, treatment protocols, medical education, the selection, licensing, and oversight of practitioners by the state, their stipends, official ranks, and the charitable endowments (waqf) supporting these institutions . It also includes a discussion of mobile field hospitals (al-bimaristan al-mahmul) used in epidemics, military campaigns, and prisons .
- Part Two (al-Bab al-Thani): Provides a detailed regional history of individual hospitals across the Islamic world . It begins with the pre-Islamic medical center and hospital of Gondeshapur as an intellectual precursor, followed by specific treatments of hospitals founded across Iraq, Upper Mesopotamia (al-Jazira), Egypt, Syria, the Arabian Peninsula (including Mecca), Iran (such as Rayy and Isfahan), the Maghrib (including Tunis and Marrakesh), al-Andalus, and Anatolia and Istanbul .
Sources and Reception
Isa drew on classical historical, biographical, and topographical works, extracting material from unedited manuscripts such as Tarikh Hukama' al-Islam by Zahir al-Din al-Bayhaqi and Qatf al-Azhar fi al-Khitat wa-l-Athar by Abu Surur al-Bakri .
The scholar and diplomat Qasim Ghani described the book as a comprehensive reference on the subject, noting that Isa documented approximately eighty historical bimaristans with details of their establishment, endowments, and associated physicians and students . A contemporary review in Majallat al-Risala praised the work for compiling previously unrecorded archival data and for including an index of hospitals, while remarking that a companion index dedicated specifically to physicians would have further enhanced its utility .
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