The last great medieval ophthalmologist

Akfani, Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn al-. Kashf al-Rayn 'an 'Ilaj Amrad al-'Ayn [Uncovering the treatments for disorders of the eye].

€ 32,000.00

Written by a Sinjar-born physician based in Cairo, this Arabic medical manuscript was copied in the late 16th century by a Jewish scribe who ended his work with an additional colophon in what appears to be Judeo-Arabic, and over its long lifetime was passed between owners from Nubia to Aleppo. Its author was the last great ophthalmologist of the medieval period, Ibn al-Akfani (ca. 1286-1348/49 CE), a doctor potentially of Kurdish descent who was employed at al-Mansuri hospital in Cairo, where he eventually contracted and succumbed to the bubonic plague.

Before his death, Ibn al-Akfani contributed widely to the literature of medicine and science. Among his most important works is the present manuscript, more commonly known simply as "Al-Zayn", which ranked as the leading textbook on the diseases and disorders of the eyes for the next three centuries. The ownership inscriptions on the flyleaf of the manuscript give an idea of its wide-ranging popular use: it was held by a servant of the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo, a physician from Homs, Syria, and a Nubian named Ahmad al-Shibir. Composed in Cairo by a doctor from Sinjar and copied by an Egyptian Jewish scribe, the manuscript particularly illustrates the cross-cultural underpinnings of Arabic medical literature, as well as preserving an influential work of medieval ophthalmology, a science particularly associated with the Arab world.