IBN AL-NAFIS

 

ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Abī Ḥazm al-Qarashī, better known as Ibn al-Nafīs, is regarded as: 

• the "father of circulatory physiology"
• the “greatest physician of his time”
• the “greatest physiologist of the Middle Ages”
• the “author of the largest encyclopedia by a single person”
• mentioned by some historians as the “second Ibn Sina”

He was the first person to challenge the long-held contention of the Galen School that blood could pass through the cardiac interventricular septum, and in keeping with this he believed that all the blood that reached the left ventricle passed through the lung. He also stated that there must be small communications or pores (manafidh in Arabic) between the pulmonary artery and vein, a prediction that preceded by 400 years the discovery of the pulmonary capillaries by Marcello Malpighi. 

He was one of the many Arab polymaths, that is scholars who worked in a large number of different areas. It is presumed that Al-Nafis wrote more than 110 volumes of medical textbooks.

Ibn al-Nafis was born around 1210-1213 in Karashia, a village near Damascus. He studied theology, philosophy, and literature. At the age of 16, he went to Nuri Hospital in Damascus and studied medicine there for 10 years. At the age of 23, he was invited to Egypt by the Ayyubid Sultan Al-Kamil. There, he was appointed as the chief physician at al-Naseri Hospital. He also taught jurisprudence at Al-Masruriyya Madarsa. He passed away in Cairo on 17th December 1288.

Among the various treatises written by Ibn al-Nafis, the most voluminous is the Al-Shamil fi Al-Tibb (The Comprehensive Book on Medicine). It was planned as a 300-volume encyclopedia, however, only 80 volumes could be completed by Ibn al-Nafis. It is one of the largest medical encyclopedias ever written by one person, and it gave a complete summary of the medical knowledge in the Islamic world at the time. His most famous treatise is regarded as the Sharh Tashrih al-Qanun ("Commentary on Anatomy in Books I and II of Ibn Sina's Kitab al-Qanun"), which he wrote at the age of 29 years.

The opening page of a book on medicine by Ibn al-Nafis

He also wrote a book on ophthalmology titled “al-Muhaḏḏab fī al-Kuhl” (“Polished Book on ophthalmology”); an original book on ophthalmology. Ibn al-Nafis wrote this book to polish and build on the concepts of ophthalmology originally made by Masawaiyh and Ibn Ishaq.

REFERENCES:

• West JB. Ibn al-Nafis, the pulmonary circulation, and the Islamic Golden Age. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2008 Dec;105(6):1877-80. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.91171.2008. Epub 2008 Oct 9. PMID: 18845773; PMCID: PMC2612469.

• Light From the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam Helped to Shape the Western World, John Freely.
• Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, Edited by Ronald L. Numbers.
• Feucht, Cynthia; Greydanus, Donald E.; Merrick, Joav; Patel, Dilip R.; Omar, Hatim A. (2012). Pharmacotherapeutics in Medical Disorders. Walter de Gruyter. p. 2. ISBN 978-3-11-027636-7.
• Moore, Lisa Jean; Casper, Monica J. (2014). The Body: Social and Cultural Dissections. Routledge. p. 124. ISBN 978-1-136-77172-9.