English: Abu Sahl Isa Ibn Yahya al-Jurgani al-Masihi, Article II of Al-Tibb al-Kulli, a treatise on medicine, probably Western Persia or Anatolia, dated 630 AH/1232-3 AD

Ink on Paper 20.7 by 12.6cm.

Arabic manuscript on thick paper, 78 leaves plus 2 flyleaves, 26 lines to the page written in naskh script in brown ink, ailments and their associated medicines picked out in red ink, plain brown morocco binding with punched dot decoration and scrolling borders

Arabic inscriptions on title page state that this manuscript was compared with copies dated 580 and 590 AH/1184 and 1193 AD.

This medical treatise addresses the treatment of various bodily ailments. The text begins with the second maqala which is divided into forty-two babs (indicated by a letter of the alphabet), including cures for complaints relating to the brain, eyes, ears, mouth, throat, heart, chest, stomach, liver, spleen, kidney (stones), womb and pregnancy, hair, skin, and further ailments.

The author appears to be very important since he was the teacher of Ibn Sina. Brockelmann records only one other copy of al-Tibb al-Kulli in the Rampur Library 1, 489/164, see C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, Leiden, 1996, S.1, pp.423-4.

Abu Sahl Isa Ibn Yahya al-Jurgani al-Masihi (d.1010-11 AD) was a Christian scholar from Jurgan with many interests in medicine, geometry, and astronomy. He is mainly known as a physician who was the teacher of Ibn Sina (980-1037 AD), and worked with him and al-Biruni in Gurganj at the court of the Khwarizmshah al-Ma'mun II (1009-1017 AD). He was ordered to move to Ghazna by Sultan Mahmud Ghaznawi (998-1030 AD), but did not wish to move so he fled and perished in a desert sandstorm in Khwarizm.

He wrote an encyclopaedic treatise on medicine of one hundred chapters, al-mi'ah fi-l-sana'ah al-tibbiyah, which is considered one of the earliest Arabic works of its kind, and may have been in some respects the model of Ibn Sina's al-Qanun. He also wrote treatises on the plague, the pulse and measles (see B. Rosenfeld & E. Ihsanoglu, Mathematicians, Astronomers and other Scholars of Islamic Civilization and their Works, 7th-19th Centuries, Istanbul, 2003, p.108, no.285).