Ibn Juljul - Andalusian author

Ibn Juljul al-Andalusi, Sylayman ibn Hasan was born in Cordoba in AD 943. He died ca, 994.

He studied medicine with a gorup of Hellenists presided over  by Hasday ibn Shaprut, a Jewish physician and vizier of the Caliph Abd Al-Rahman II. Ibn Juljul later became medical advisor of the Caliph Hisham II (976-1009).

Ibn Juljul is the author of Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ w’al-hukamā’ (Generations of physicians and Wise Men), the oldest extant summary in Arabic on the history of medicine, after Ishaq ibn Hunayn’s  Ta’rij al-atibba (History of the Physician)

In Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ w’al-hukamā’ Ibn Juljuul enumerates medical doctors practicing during the reigns of Muhammad and Abd al-Rahman II.

These include a monk named Jawad, famed for his medicines and potions; Khalid Ibn Yazid Ruman, similarly reputed for his botanical drugs and Ibn Maluka, a Cordoban surgeon and bleeder who had thirty chairs for patients set up at the door of his house.

It contains fifty-seven biographies grouped into nine generations; thirty-one of them concern Asian authors and the rest refer to African and Andalusian scholars.

A number of these are Christians, whose main medical manual is a world known as ‘The Aphorisms’ of which an updated version in five books was produced by the Muslim doctor Yahya b. Imam.

Ibn Juljul mentioned several Christian physicians, whom he said were the most eminent medical men in al-Andalus until the middle of the ninth century, when medical texts arrived from the east and Christian learning became obsolete.

Ibn Juljul also wrote Tafsir asma al-adwiya al-mufradat min kitab diyusquridis (An Explanation of the names of Simple Drugs in the book of Dioscorides).

Ibn Juljul has explained the terms for simple remedies in the work of Dioscorides from ‘Ain Zarbah and clarified their hidden meaning.
Ibn Juljul - Andalusian author

Physician of Andalusia in history

Research institutions and libraries were plentiful and men in quest of higher knowledge came from afar to learn in the universities of al-Andalus.

As a result, many great intellectual giants in the form of scientists, physicians, and philosophers emerged.

The first great medical school in Europe was founded under Muslim rule in Cordoba, so despite its geographic location it should properly be considered one of the fruits of Arab medicine. The hospital was founded in 1366-67 by Prince Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Nasr. The hospital operate until the fall of Granada.

Leading physicians from al-Andalus include Ibn Juljul, born in Cordoba in the year 943, he began his studies at the age of 14 and within a decade became a highly respected and leading physician. Among his achievements were writing commentaries compiling a list of medicines locally available, and writing a history of Spanish Muslim physician of al-Andalus.

Among the Arabian physicians, there is no one who entitled to the merit of so much originality or of correct observation as Abdel-Malek-Abu Marwan Ibn Zuhr, or known under the name of Avenzoar (1094-1162) . 

Avenzoar would seem to have first described the inflammation of the mediastinum and of the pericardium as well as dropsy and empyema of the latter.

Toward the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century lived in Granada a surgeon by the name Muhammad as-Safra. A short book of surgery is attributed to him. His work tells us the status of surgery in Granada toward the end of the Islamic period.

It was through Cordoba that Arab medical knowledge flowed into Europe. The first translation of the Arab and Greek texts into Latin, which made them available to the rest of Europe, took place here.
Physician of Andalusia in history