The Collection (Al-Tasrif) by Albucasis

The most famous professor in Cordoba was Albucasis (936-1013), who wrote the only textbook in Arabic that treated surgery as a separate subject. This is the last of his thirty-chapter medical treatise, termed The Collection. It is the Al-Tasrif.

Albucasis is the Latinized name of the Hispano-Arabic physician-surgeon Abu Al-Qasim al-Zahrawi. He was born in Muslim Spain in El-Zahra, a little village near Cordoba, in the year 936. He became an important member of the Cordovan center of Islam and was highly esteemed as a physician and as a very able surgeon.

He was an active practitioner who was said to have left his doors open day and night and whose courtyard was reputed to have been perennially overflowing with the poor patients for whom he cared as a charitable obligation.

In his introduction, Albucasis complained that surgery had almost completely disappeared as a specialty in Spain. Proficient surgeons could no longer be found as a result of the absence of anatomical knowledge; dissection indeed was prohibited.

Al-Tasrif was completed in AD 1000 and reflected Albucasis’s nearly 50 years of study and practice.

One feature of this book is the large number of illustrations of surgical instruments which, together with the descriptive text, serve to clarify the operative techniques he described.

The volume of the Al-Tasrif was dedicated to surgery and was divided into three parts: first part, the use of cautery: second part; lithotomy, wound care and amputation for gangrene and the third with fractures and dislocation, including an excellent description of paralysis from spinal trauma.

The book was translated into Latin in the 12th century by Gerard of Cremona, and became a work of central value to surgery in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
The Collection (Al-Tasrif) by Albucasis

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