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The polymath Fakhr al-Dīn Riḍwān b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Rustam al-Khurāsānī al-Sāʿātī ( al-sāʿātī = the clockmaker) (d. c.627/1230) was an Arab physician and littérateur who was well-versed in logic and other philosophical disciplines as well as in clockmaking. He was born and raised in Damascus. His father, Muḥammad, a skilled clockmaker and keen astronomer, was a native of Khurāsān in eastern Iran but moved to Syria, settling in Damascus. He was commissioned by the Zangid ruler Nūr al-Dīn (r. 541–69/1147–74…

The term Arabistics for Arabic studies did not appear in Europe until after 1850, but since around 1500 European scholars had been engaged in the scientific study of the language and literature of the Arabs, as well as their history and culture. While in the Middle Ages scholars studied the most important language of the Islamic world, the language of the Quran, solely for evangelistic purposes (Mission), the Reconquista, the Reformation, and Humanism altered the motives of scholars for engaging with Arabic.When direct military confrontation came to an end in Spain, a re…

1. MiningSince its beginnings in antiquity, mineralogy (from Old French   mine, “[ore] mine”) was characterized by its close relationship with mining and smelting (Mining). Experience had already accepted implicitly the Aristotelian distinction between metals (Greek plural  metalleía; Latin  metalla), which had to be worked, and fossils (Greek  oryktá; Latin  fossilia), which merely had to be dug. For the early modern period, this division was authoritative in the form presented in the early 11th century by the Arab physician and naturalist A…

Galen (129-c. 216 C.E.), known to the Arabs as Jālīnūs, was a Greek-speaking physician born in Pergamum. His career, which unfolded essentially in Rome under the reign of emperors Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and Septimius Severus, occupies a place in the history of Arab medicine comparable to that of Aristotle with respect to philosophy. His vast work (more than 20,000 pages in the standard edition by C. G. Kühn, Leipzig 1821–33) representing one eighth of the totality of preserved Greek literatu…

Abū Bakra, Nufayʿ b. Masrūḥ (d. 52/672), was one of the Companions and clients ( mawālī, sing. mawlā) of the Prophet. His mother was Sumayya and according to Ibn Qutayba (p. 288), came from Zandward (near Wāsiṭ). It is said that Kisrā (Khusraw), the king of Persia, offered her to Abū al-Khayr, the ruler of Yemen who, in turn, gave her to the Arab physician al-Ḥārith b. Kalada al-Thaqafī as a reward for curing him when he fell ill. However, this account is not corroborated in other sources nor are any further det…

or Boqrāṭ in Islamic tradition, where he is often referred to as “the first codifier of medicine” (4th-3rd cents. BCE). A version of this article is available in print Volume XII, Fascicle 3, pp. 317-322 HIPPOCRATES, or Boqrāṭ (var. Eboqrāṭ, Eboqrā-ṭis, Boqrāṭis) in Islamic tradition, where he is often referred to as “the first codifier of medicine.” He is traditionally, but without factual basis, said to have been born on the Island of Cos (Dodecanese) in about 460 and to have died in Larissa (Thessaly) around 370 B.C.E. (for th…

A version of this article is available in printVolume III, Fascicle 8, pp. 863-869i. General Pre-Islamic Iran. Bathhouses existed prior to the Islamic period in the Iranian cultural area. However, their number seems to have been limited due to the Zoroastrian religion’s reverence for the holy element of water. This may explain why Yāqūt (I, p. 199; Spuler, p. 266), quoting the authority of an Arab physician, states that the Sasanians did not know the use of baths. Nevertheless, archeological finds in Ḵᵛārazm, f…

Shaykh Ṭanṭāwī Jawharī (1862-1940) was an Egyptian exegete famous for having composed a scientific interpretation of the Qurʾān. His publications were considered controversial and provocative by Islamic scholars, including staff at al-Azhar University and other Muslim places of learning, in the early twentieth century. The printing and distribution of his Qurʾān commentary was banned throughout Arabia, and his strong belief in spiritualism also caused some of his works to be banned in the Dutch East Indies for a time (Goldschmidt, Biographical dictionary, 96). Although he wa…