Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari علي بن سهل ربَّن طبري | |
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Born | Amol, Iran |
Died | Samarra, Iraq |
Notable work | Firdaws al-Hikmah, first Islamic encyclopedic work on medicine |
Era | Islamic Golden Age |
Notable students | Abu Bakr al-Razi |
Main interests | Medicine, philosophy, calligraphy, astronomy |
Notable ideas | Discovery of the contagious nature of pulmonary tuberculosis |
Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari (Persian: علی ابن سهل ربن طبری; c. 838 – c. 870 CE; also given as 810–855[1] or 808–864[2] also 783–858[3]), was a Persian[4][5] Muslim scholar, physician and psychologist, who produced one of the first Islamic encyclopedia of medicine titled Firdaws al-Hikmah ("Paradise of Wisdom"). Ali ibn Sahl spoke Syriac and Greek, the two sources of the medical tradition of Antiquity which had been lost by medieval Europe, and transcribed in meticulous calligraphy. His most famous student was the physician and alchemist Abu Bakr al-Razi (c. 865–925). Al-Tabari wrote the first encyclopedic work on medicine. He lived for over 70 years and interacted with important figures of the time, such as Muslim caliphs, governors, and eminent scholars. Because of his family's religious history, as well as his religious work, al-Tabarī was one of the most controversial scholars. He first discovered that pulmonary tuberculosis is contagious.[6][7]
Outside the rational sciences, as a convert from Christianity to Islam he was also involved in interreligious polemics, writing two works critical of his former religion, al-Radd ´alā l-Nasārā (The Refutation of the Christians) and Kitāb al-dīn wa-l-dawla (The Book of Religion and Empire), both of which having been published by Brill in 2016 in a single book, The Polemical Works of ʿAlī al-Ṭabarī.
Selin1997
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).The greatest of these figures, who ushered in the golden age of Islamic medicine and who are discussed separately by E. G. Browne in his Arabian Medicine, are four Persian physicians: 'All b. Rabban al-Tabarl, Muhammad b. Zakariyya' al-Razl, 'All b. al-'Abbas al-Majusi and Ibn Sina.
The work is quoted in the Firdaws al-Hikma or "Paradise of Wisdom" composed in AD 850 by the Persian physician 'Alī Ibn Sahl Rabban at-Tabarī who gives a very complete summary of the āyurvedic doctrines.