Kitab al-Tasrif

The Kitab al-Tasrif (كتاب التصريف لمن عجز عن التأليف, Kita al-Tasrif limn 'Ajiz 'an al-T'aleef), literally meaning "The Method of Medicine" is a 30-volume Arabic encyclopedia on medicine and surgery, written near the year 1000 by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (known to the West as Abulcasis).

Overview

The Kitab al-Tasrif took al-Zahrawi over 50 years to complete. It contains information about a wide variety of illnesses, injuries, medical conditions, treatments, and surgical procedures. It describes over 200 different surgical instruments. Surgeons continued to rely on the Kitab al-Tasrif well into the 1700s; some of al-Zahrawi’s surgical procedures are still being used to this very day.

The work covers a broad range of medical topics, including on surgery, medicine, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition, dentistry, childbirth, and pathology. The last treatise and the most celebrated one is about surgery. al-Zahrawi stated that he chose to discuss surgery in the last volume because surgery is the highest form of medicine, and one must not practice it until he becomes well-acquainted with all other branches of medicine.

Notable Manuscripts

circa 1710 CE

Patna Manuscripts
The Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library in Patna (India) has two valuable manuscripts of al-Tasrif. One of them, which is dated 1710 CE, has 27 (out of 30) treatises of the book in 494 folios, and is written in the Maghrebi script. The other manuscript contains only the last (30th) treatise and has 248 folios. This manuscript, written in the Naskhi script in 1188 CE, has nearly 200 drawings and illustrations of clinical and surgical devices and instruments. This is perhaps the earliest and one of the finest manuscripts of al-Tasrif.

Gallery

References

• Fleischer, Aylmer von. Moorish Europe. Aylmer von Fleischer."His work, Al-Tasrif, later translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona, became the standard medical text for European Universities such as those at Salerno and Montpellier. This work was widely used by European medical practitioners for centuries."
• al-Zahrāwī, Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʻAbbās; Studies, Gustave E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern (1973). Albucasis on surgery and instruments. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-01532-6. Retrieved 16 May 2011.
• Abū Al-Qāsim Khalaf Ibn ʾabbās Al-Zahrāwī. Albucasis on Surgery and Instruments. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
• Butt, Arthur J. (1956). Etiologic Factors in Renal Lithiasis. Thomas.
• Ingrid Hehmeyer and Aliya Khan (2007). "Islam's forgotten contributions to medical science", Canadian Medical Association Journal 176 (10).
• Selin, Helaine (2008). Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 1545.
• Becker, Marshall Joseph; Turfa, Jean MacIntosh (2017). The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry: The Golden Smile Through the Ages. Taylor & Francis. p. 146.
• Andrews, Esther K. (2007). Practice Management for Dental Hygienists. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. p. 6."Abu al-Qasim, also known as Abulcasis, wrote an encyclopedia of medicine and surgery (al-Tasrif) that is now kept at Oxford University. His unique contribution to dentistry reported the relationship between calculus and periodontal disease. He promoted prevention by recommending scaling calculus above and below the gums until all accretions were removed even if it takes multiple visits."
• Holmes-Walker, Anthony (2004). Life-enhancing plastics : plastics and other materials in medical applications. London: Imperial College Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-1-86094-462-8.
• Castiglioni, Arturo (1958). A history of medicine. A. A. Knopf. p. 274."Abulcasis (Alsaharavius or Abu'l-Qasim) (d. c. 1013) was the author of a surgical treatise which in surgery held the same authority as did the Canon of Avicenna in medicine."
• "Theoretical and Practical Book by Al-Zahrawi". 1519.
• Sami Hamarneh, Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical Treatise, in United States National Museum Bulletin No.228, 1961.