Al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis)
c. 936–1013 · Surgeon of Muslim Spain whose illustrated surgical treatise, the last book of his encyclopedia al-Tasrif, was used in European schools for centuries.
Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas al-Zahrawi, known in Latin Europe as Abulcasis, was born around 936 near Córdoba in al-Andalus, Muslim Spain; his name links him to Madinat al-Zahra, the palace city of the Umayyad caliphs. He is often described as a court physician to Caliph al-Hakam II. Over a long career he wrote al-Tasrif, a medical encyclopedia in thirty treatises covering diet, drugs, diseases and treatment. Its final treatise, on surgery, was the most influential: it described cautery, the treatment of wounds, fractures and dislocations, the removal of bladder stones, obstetrics and dentistry, and included drawings of some two hundred surgical instruments, several of them his own designs. In the twelfth century Gerard of Cremona translated the surgical treatise into Latin, and it became a standard textbook in European universities into the Renaissance. Al-Zahrawi urged surgeons to know anatomy well and to refuse operations they could not perform safely. He died around 1013, the year Córdoba was sacked during civil war.
Faith: A Muslim physician and author. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
See also: Avicenna · Al-Razi · Ambroise Paré
Key dates
- c. 936 Born near Córdoba, al-Andalus
- c. 1000 Completes al-Tasrif, his thirty-part medical encyclopedia
- c. 1013 Dies in Córdoba
- 12th century Gerard of Cremona translates the surgical treatise into Latin
Read about them
Grades 9–12
- The Canon of Medicine, Book I · In the library
More lives
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) · Ibn al-Nafis · Maimonides · Abu Bakr al-Razi (Rhazes)
Notes: Birth and death years are approximate (c. 936 and c. 1013). The court-physician role under al-Hakam II is traditional and not well documented. "About 200 instruments" is the usual count; editions differ.