Here’s some analysis and commentary on Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah’s History of Physicians, which was written in Arabic in thirteenth-century Damascus. Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah’s book describes physicians and medical practices from the origin of medicine to the thirteenth century.
Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah’s book is now freely available online with Arabic text, English translation, commentary, and interpretive essays: Savage-Smith, Emilie, Simon Swain, G. J. H. van Gelder, and Ignacio Javier Sánchez Rojo. 2020. A literary history of medicine: the ‘Uyūn al-anbā’ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ of Ibn Abīuṣaybi’ah {The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians}. 5 vols. Handbook of Oriental studies. Section One, Near and Middle East, volume 134/1. Leiden: Brill.
Even within the vicious political life of the 10th-century Abbasid caliphate, care for persons sick and in prisons indicated personal merit. … Read the post ancient public gestures of compassion for the sick and prisoners
If authorities counsel men against having sex with old women, that implies that men are sexually attracted to old women. … Read the post the sexual allure of old women in early Persian literature
Bedouin Arab physician Nafi al-Harith conquers Persian King Anushirwan with a description of womanly beauty and the best time for sexual intercourse. … Read the post controlling words about a woman's attractiveness
Conceptual study transformed Greek scriptio continua to articulated texts in the 10th-century Islamic world and in 13th-century European scholasticism. … Read the post the history of paratextual organization
The evidence favors Hanayn’s authorship of his autobiographical epistle c. 860. The epistle survives only in ibn Abi Usaibia’s 13th-century text. … Read the post did Hunayn author his autobiographical epistle?