Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi

Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi al-Jurjani (Persian: ابو سهل عيسى‌ بن‌ يحيى مسيحی گرگانی) was a Christian Persian^[1][2] physician,^[3] from Gorgan, east of the Caspian Sea, in Iran.

Article II of al-Masihi's Al-Tibb al-Kulli (a treatise on medicine). Copy created in western Iran or Anatolia, dated 1232-3

He was the teacher of Avicenna. He wrote an encyclopedic treatise on medicine of one hundred chapters (al-mā'a fi-l-sanā'a al-tabi'iyyah; Arabic: المائة في الصناعة الطبيعية), which is one of the earliest Arabic works of its kind and may have been in some respects the model of Avicenna's Qanun.

He wrote other treatises on measles, on the plague, on the pulse, etc.

He died in a dust storm in the deserts of Khwarezmia in 1010.

References

1. Karamati, Younes (2008). "Abū Sahl al-Masīḥī". In Madelung, Wilferd; Daftary, Farhad (eds.). Encyclopaedia Islamica Online. Brill Online. ISSN 1875-9831.
2. Bosworth, C.E. (2000). History of civilizations of Central Asia, Volume IV. Paris: UNESCO Publ. p. 306. ISBN 92-3-103654-8. Comparable to al-Rāzi before him and to his own younger contemporary Ibn Sinā, al-Masihi represents the physician-philosopher of classical and Islamic tradition. From the point of view of religious history, it is also of interest that he was descended from Iranian Christians and held, albeit discreetly, to his faith.
3. Firoozeh Papan-Matin, Beyond death: the mystical teachings of ʻAyn al-Quḍāt al-Hamadhānī, (Brill, 2010), 111.

Sources

• Carl Brockelmann: Arabische Litteratur (vol. 1, 138, 1898).
• G. Karmi, A mediaeval compendium of Arabic medicine: Abu Sahl al-Masihi's "Book of the Hundred.", J. Hist. Arabic Sci. vol. 2(2) 270-90 (1978).

Further reading

• Savage-Smith, Emilie (2021). "ʿĪsā b. Yaḥyā l-Masīḥī". In Fleet, Kate; Krämer, Gudrun; Matringe, Denis; Nawas, John; Rowson, Everett (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam (3rd ed.). Brill Online. ISSN 1873-9830.

See also

• List of Iranian scientists