Hamdard Medicus

Among the pioneers who encouraged, promoted and reshaped the development of medicine in medieval Islam was the physician, therapist and medical educator, Abu Zakariya Yahya Ibn (or b. meaning son of) Masawayh (Latin Mesue, the Elder). He was born about 162 H/778, in the renowned city of Jundisabur (Arabic Junday Sabur) or JundaShapur (soldier’s camp of Shapur I), the founder of the Sassanid dynasty (reigned, 240-272). In 266, Shapur captured and devastated the Syrian capital city of Antioch; and about four years later, he defeated, captured Emperor Valerian (253-60) and ruthlessly slew him thus putting an end to an impending fall of the Western Roman Empire.¹

This monarch shortly founded Jundi-Shapur and called it: “Veh Antiok Shapur”; meaning, “Shapur’s Antioch had become by far the better one.” The city was soon populated thereafter by Greco-Roman refugees and other ethnic groups to become a sizable and significant center of learning and culture. It is still considered a recognized site at al-Ahwaz in Khuzistan province, in south-west Iran. The grandson, Shapur II (309-79) was an ambitious and enterprising leader who lived long as a great monarch, although he apparently persecuted both Jews and Christians alike.

However, the great grandson, Khosrow I Anushirvan (Arabic Kisra Anushirwan, 531-79), the just, was by far more tolerant and liberal than his predecessors. During his unprejudiced reign, the Sassanian Dynasty reached the apogee of its prosperity, prestige and power. Being so highly reputed reformer, administrator and patron of science and literature, this great monarch established an academy for medicine, natural history and philosophy that flourished for over three centuries. It then operated privately, more or less, under the administration and supervision of the Nestorian Christians, who taught these disciplines in their mother tongue, the Syriac.²

A scion of this multilingual learned community, most of whom invariably knew Greek, Persian, Syriac and Arabic was a certain man, whose name was Masawayh. Of his ancestral lineage, we know almost nothing except that he adhered to the Nestorian faith of Christianity. And here at Jundisabur, together with the medical academy, the Nestorians established a prototype hospital or a bimarastan (a bimar-khanah, an infirmary, as an abode or house for the healing of the sick). From the 7th to the 10th centuries, this institute won excellent reputation far and wide in the region.

Here in its pharmacy shop, connected with the hospital, enrolled young Masawayh, an apprentice with no formal education whatsoever. He started his career by digging crude drugs, mixing them together in prescribed formulas to prepare from them all kinds of medications and recipes for the patients at the hospital: those who came to it within the outpatient clinics, or among the clients in the hospital wards.

However, through natural inclination, in time, the brilliant, industrious and persevering Masawayh became acquainted with all the familiar remedial agents at the shop, or those obtained from herbalists (attarin). He gradually developed familiarity and understanding in choosing the best kinds of drugs, and rejecting the inferior or the adulterated. He also gained the know-how and the skill regarding the dispensing of these remedies adequately. Through trials, experiences and accurate observations, also as an oculist, he excelled in learning all about the eye, its ailments and treatment, just as he did well in the art of the apothecary, the compounding and management of preparing prescriptions, and all kinds of medicinal recipes.³

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