Knowledge is emphasised in Islam. Two very great hadiths

* the ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a matyr
*seek for knowledge even if in China


tell us of how important the seek for knowledge is in Islam. Muslim Nations were once prosperous due to their ability to make things happen. But Muslims seem to av become lazy, making our glory a thing of the past. Hopefully, we'll derive inspiration from the following GREAT Muslims who contributed immensely to the field of Medicine. SOme ignorant folks might learn too that Islam is not tantamount to poverty, disease nor to violence.

IBN SINA


IBN SINA
(980-1037 A.D.).

Abu Ali al-Hussain Ibn Abdallah Ibn Sina was born in 980 A.D. at Afshana near Bukhara. The young Bu Ali received his early education in Bukhara, and[b] by the age of ten had become well versed in the study of the Qur'an and various sciences.[/b] He started studying philosophy by reading various Greek, Muslim and other books on this subject and learnt logic and some other subjects from Abu Abdallah Natili, a famous philosopher of the time. While still young, he attained such a degree of expertise in medicine that his renown spread far and wide. At the age of 17, he was fortunate in curing Nooh Ibn Mansoor, the King of Bukhhara, of an illness in which all the well-known physicians had given up hope. On his recovery, the King wished to reward him, but the young physician only desired permission to use his uniquely stocked library.

On his father's death, Bu Ali left Bukhara and travelled to Jurjan where Khawarizm Shah welcomed him. There, he met his famous contemporary Abu Raihan al-Biruni. Later he moved to Ray and then to Hamadan, where[b] he wrote his famous book Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb.[/b] Here he treated Shams al-Daulah, the King of Hamadan, for severe colic. From Hamadan, he moved to Isphahan, where he completed many of his monumental writings. Nevertheless, he continued travelling and the excessive mental exertion as well as political turmoil spoilt his health. Finally, he returned to Hamadan where he died in 1037 A.D.

[b]He was the most famous physician, philosopher, encyclopaedist, mathematician and astronomer of his time. His major contribution to medical science was his famous book al-Qanun, known as the "Canon" in the West. The Qanun fi al-Tibb is an immense encyclo- paedia of medicine extending over a million words. It surveyed the entire medical knowledge available from ancient and Muslim sources. Due to its systematic approach, "formal perfection as well as its intrinsic value, the Qanun superseded Razi's Hawi, Ali Ibn Abbas's Maliki, and even the works of Galen, and remained supreme for six centuries". In addition to bringing together the then available knowledge, the book is rich with the author's original contribution. His important original contribution includes such advances as recognition of the contagious nature of phthisis and tuberculosis; distribution of diseases by water and soil, and interaction between psychology and health. In addition to describing pharmacological methods, the book described 760 drugs and became the most authentic materia medica of the era. He was also the first to describe meningitis and made rich contributions to anatomy, gynaecology and child health.
[/b]
His philosophical encyclopaedia Kitab al-Shifa was a monu- mental work, embodying a vast field of knowledge from philosophy to science. He classified the entire field as follows: theoretical knowledge: physics, mathematics and metaphysics; and practical knowledge: ethics, economics and politics. His philosophy synthesises Aristotelian tradition, Neoplatonic influences and Muslim theology.

Ibn Sina also contributed to mathematics, physics, music and other fields. He explained the "casting out of nines" and its applica- tion to the verification of squares and cubes. He made several astronomical observations, and devised a contrivance similar to the vernier, to increase the precision of instrumental readings. In physics, his contribution comprised the study of different forms of energy, heat, light and mechanical, and such concepts as force, vacuum and infinity. He made the important observation that if the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by the luminous source, the speed of light must be finite. He propounded an interconnection between time and motion, and also made investigations on specific gravity and used an air thermo- meter.

In the field of music, his contribution was an improvement over Farabi's work and was far ahead of knowledge prevailing else- where on the subject. Doubling with the fourth and fifth was a 'great' step towards the harmonic system and doubling with the third seems to have also been allowed. Ibn Sina observed that in the series of consonances represented by (n + 1)/n, the ear is unable to distinguish them when n = 45. In the field of chemistry, he did not believe in the possibility of chemical transmutation because, in his opinion, the metals differed in a fundamental sense. These views were radically opposed to those prevailing at the time. His treatise on minerals was one of the "main" sources of geology of the Christian encyclopaedists of the thirteenth century. Besides Shifa his well-known treatises in philosophy are al-Najat and Isharat.

deols, your thread always make sense, i trust this one will also do, will like to contribute on Economics (that is my field anyway). Ibn Khaldum

Ibn Khaldun, full name Abu Zayd Abd-Ar-Rahman Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the greatest of the medieval Islamic historians.

Born on May 27, 1332, in Tunis (now in Tunisia), of a Spanish-Arab family, Ibn Khaldun held court positions in what are today Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, and in Granada, Spain, and was twice imprisoned. In 1375 he went into seclusion near modern Frenda, Algeria, taking four years to compose his monumental Muqaddamah, the introductory volume to his Kitab al-Ibar (Universal History). In 1382, on pilgrimage to Mecca, he was offered a chair at the famous Islamic university of Al Azhar by the sultan of Cairo, who also appointed him judge (qadi) of the Maliki rite of Islam. In 1400 he accompanied the sultan's successor to Damascus in an expedition to resist the invasion of the Turkic ruler Tamerlane. Ibn Khaldun spent several weeks as Tamerlane's honored guest before returning to Cairo, where he died on March 17, 1406.

The Kitab al-Ibar is a valuable guide to the history of Muslim North Africa and the Berbers. Its six history volumes, however, are overshadowed by the immense significance of the Muqaddamah. In it, Ibn Khaldun outlined a philosophy of history and theory of society that are unprecedented in ancient and medieval writing and that are closely reflected in modern sociology. Societies, he believed, are held together by the power of social cohesiveness, which can be augmented by the unifying force of religion. Social change and the rise and fall of societies follow laws that can be empirically discovered and that reflect climate and economic activity as well as other realities.

will come up with some later about his contribution to the field of Economics.

im standing Akimbo

Nice thread. It would help if we posted references for the material we post here.

View the profile of Ibn Khaldun here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun

Nice one, It is high time we begin to talk of revitalizing the knowledge base of the Ummah.

@maclatunji, thanks for the refrence you provided  Ibn Khaldun's life is relatively well-documented, as he wrote an autobiography  (التعريف بابن خلدون ورحلته غربا وشرقا; Al-Taʻrīf bi Ibn-Khaldūn wa Riħlatuhu Gharbān wa Sharqān[9]) in which numerous documents regarding his life are quoted word-for-word. However, the autobiography has little to say about his private life, so little is known about his family background. Generally known as "Ibn Khaldūn" after a remote ancestor, he was born in Tunis in AD 1332 (732 A.H.) into an upper-class Andalusian  family, the Banū Khaldūn. His family, which held many high offices in Andalusia, had emigrated to Tunisia after the fall of Seville to Reconquista  forces around the middle of the 13th century. Under the Tunisian Hafsid dynasty some of his family held political office; Ibn Khaldūn's father and grandfather however withdrew from political life and joined a mystical order. His brother, Yahya Ibn Khaldun, was also a historian who wrote a book on the Abdalwadid dynasty, and who was assassinated by a rival for being the official historiographer of the court.[10]

In his autobiography, Ibn Khaldun traces his descent back to the time of Muhammad through an Arab tribe from Yemen, specifically Hadhramaut, which came to Spain in the eighth century at the beginning of the Islamic conquest. In his own words: "And our ancestry is from Hadhramaut, from the Arabs of Yemen, via Wa'il ibn Hajar, from the best of the Arabs, well-known and respected." (p. 2429, Al-Waraq's edition). However, the biographer Mohammad Enan questions his claim, suggesting that his family may have been Muladis who pretended to be of Arab origin in order to gain social status.[11] Enan also mentions a well documented past tradition, concerning certain Berber groups, whereby they delusively "aggrandize" themselves with some Arab ancestry. The motive of such an invention was always the desire for political and societal ascendancy. Some speculate this of the Khaldun family; they elaborate that Ibn Khaldun himself was the product of the same Berber ancestry as the native majority of his birthplace. A point congenial to this posits that Ibn Khaldun's unusual written focus on, and admiration for Berbers reveals a deference towards them that is born of a vested interest in preserving them in the realm of conscious history; such is that which the true Arabs of his day would find no enthusiasm for and indeed a vested interest in suppressing. Moreover the special position that he affords Berbers in his work is fully vindicated upon comparing it with his vitriolic attitudes towards the Arab, and his relative disinterest in the state of affairs outside the Maghreb. In contrast, Muhammad Hozien chooses to believe: "The false [Berber] identity would be valid however at the time that Ibn Khaldun’s ancestors left Andalusia and moved to Tunisia they did not change their claim to Arab ancestry. Even in the times when Berbers were ruling, the reigns of Al-Marabats and al-Mowahids, et al. the Ibn Khalduns did not reclaim their Berber heritage.".[12] This point ignores the aforementioned phenomenon of adopting an Arab ancestry to garner prestige.
[edit] Education

His family's high rank enabled Ibn Khaldun to study with the best teachers in Maghreb. He received a classical Islamic education, studying the Qur'an which he memorized by heart, Arabic linguistics, the basis for an understanding of the Qur'an, hadith, sharia (law) and fiqh (jurisprudence). He received certification (ijazah) for all these subjects.[13] The mystic, mathematician and philosopher, Al-Abili, introduced him to mathematics, logic and philosophy, where he above all studied the works of Averroes, Avicenna, Razi and Tusi. At the age of 17, Ibn Khaldūn lost both his parents to the Black Death, an intercontinental epidemic of the plague that hit Tunis in 1348–1349.

Following family tradition, Ibn Khaldūn strove for a political career. In the face of a tumultuous political situation in North Africa, this required a high degree of skill developing and dropping alliances prudently, to avoid falling with the short-lived regimes of the time. Ibn Khaldūn's autobiography is the story of an adventure, in which he spends time in prison, reaches the highest offices and falls again into exile.
[edit] Early years in Tunis and Granada

At the age of 20, he began his political career at the Chancellery of the Tunisian ruler Ibn Tafrakin with the position of Kātib al-'Alāmah, which consisted of writing in fine calligraphy the typical introductory notes of official documents. In 1352, Abū Ziad, the Sultan of Constantine, marched on Tunis and defeated it. Ibn Khaldūn, in any case unhappy with his respected but politically meaningless position, followed his teacher Abili to Fez. Here the Marinid sultan Abū Inan Fares I appointed him as a writer of royal proclamations, which didn't prevent Ibn Khaldūn from scheming against his employer. In 1357 this brought the 2

can u pls remove the quotte? it makes it uneasy to read. thanks!

^^^ Click on the wikipedia link I posted and read it there. It is easier on the eye there.

thanks

Sure

AL RAZI, the clinician.

One of the greatest names in medieval medicine is that of Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya' al-Razi, who was born in the Iranian City of Rayy in 865 (251 H) and died in the same town about 925 (312 H). A physician learned in philosophy as well as music and alchemy, he served at the Samanid court in Central Asia and headed hospitals in Rayy and Baghdad. A story is related that he was instrumental in determining the location in Baghdad of the hospital founded by `Adud al-Dawlah, for he is said to have chosen its position by hanging pieces of meat in various quarters of the city and finding the quarter in which the putrefaction of the meat was the slowest. ( )Since, however, the `Adudi hospital was founded in 980 (370 H), more than 50 years after al-Razi died, it must be an earlier hospital, probably the one founded during the reign of al-Mu`tadid (ruled 892-902/279-289 H), which he helped locate and of which he was later director.

The most sought after of all his compositions was The Comprehensive Book on Medicine (Kitab al-Hawi fi al-tibb) -- a large private notebook or commonplace book into which he placed extracts from earlier authors regarding diseases and therapy and also recorded clinical cases of his own experience. The material comprising the Hawi is arranged under headings of different diseases, with separate sections on pharmacological topics. The National Library of Medicine is fortunate in having the oldest recorded copy of this treatise, or rather part of the treatise, for the manuscript contains only the section on gastrointestinal complaints. The unnamed scribe completed the copy on the 19th of the month Dhu al-Qa`dah in the year 487 of the Muslim era, which is equivalent to 30 November 1094.

Following al-Razi's death, Ibn al-`Amid, a statesman and scholar appointed vizier to the Persian ruler Rukn al-Dawlah in 939 (327 H), happened to be in the town of Rayy and purchased from al-Razi's sister the notes comprising the Hawi, or Comprehensive Book. He then arranged for the pupils of al-Razi to put the notes in order and make them available. The Hawi is an extremely important source for our knowledge of Greek, Indian, and early Arabic writings now lost, for al-Razi was meticulous about crediting his sources. Moreover, the clinical cases, while not unique, are the most numerous and varied in the Islamic medieval medical literature.

Europe knew al-Razi by the Latinized form of his name, Rhazes. His Comprehensive Book on Medicine, the Hawi, was translated into Latin in 1279 under the title Continens by Faraj ben Salim, a physician of Sicilian-Jewish origin employed by Charles of Anjou to translate medical works. Even more influential in Europe was al-Razi's Book of Medicine Dedicated to Mansur, a short general textbook on medicine in ten chapters which he had dedicated in 903 (290 H) to the Samanid prince Abu Salih al-Mansur ibn Ishaq, governor of Rayy. The treatise was translated into Latin in Toledo by Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187) and was known as Liber ad Almansoris. It became one of the most widely read medieval medical manuals in Europe, and the ninth chapter, on therapeutics, frequently circulated by itself under the title Liber nonus ad Almansorem. In the Renaissance many editions of it were printed with commentaries by the prominent physicians of the day, such as Andreas Vesalius.

A third treatise by al-Razi that was also influential in Europe was his book on smallpox and measles (Kitab fi al-jadari wa-al-hasbah). His was not the earliest monograph on the subject -- that honor goes to Thabit ibn Qurrah, a 9th-century Sabian Syriac-speaking translator and scholar working in Baghdad who became one of the great names in the history of Islamic science, especially in mathematics and astronomy. Al-Razi's treatise on smallpox and measles was, however, the more influential and was twice translated into Latin in the 18th century at a time when there was much interest in inoculation or variolation around 1720 following the description of the procedure in Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the Ambassador Extraordinary to the Turkish Court in Istanbul.

Among al-Razi's smaller medical tracts were treatises on colic, on stones in the kidney and bladder, on curing diseases in one hour (such as headache, toothache, haemorrhoids, and dysentery in small children), on diseases of children, on diabetes, on food for the sick, on maladies of the joints, on medicine for one who is unattended by a physician, on medical aphorisms, and on the fact that some mild diseases are more difficult to diagnose and treat than the serious ones. He also composed a book on the reason why the heads of people swell at the time of the roses and produce catarrh, in which he was apparently the first to relate hay fever to the scent of roses.

Throughout his writings, al-Razi displayed a primary interest in therapeutics, lacking the concern of later writers for refining the classification of symptoms. He was not in such awe of Galen that he refrained from correcting him, but his criticism was in the areas of logic and clinical applications. For example, he said that in his experience in hospitals in Baghdad and Rayy he had seen as many cases whose courses did not follow Galen's description of fevers as did. He also stated in regard to a certain urinary ailment that, while Galen had seen only three cases, he had seen hundreds and consequently knew more about it. While al-Razi was critical of specific points, one can only conclude that he considered the medical theory adequate for his purposes, for he displayed no interest in altering its theoretical foundations.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/islamic_medical/islamic_06.html