Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari

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.