Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and Literature — John Shaqi
Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and LiteratureArbuthnot, F. F.
History
Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and Literature
Arbuthnot, F. F.
Arabian Peninsula -- History; Arabic literature -- History and criticism
A brief notice must be given of the celebrated physician and
philosopher, Ali bin Ridhwan, who died A.D. 1067. He was such a
prodigy of precocious learning that he began to lecture on medicine
and philosophy at Cairo from his fourteenth year. He afterwards also
taught astronomy. At the age of thirty-two he had attained a great
reputation as a physician, and was a rich man at sixty. He left more
than one hundred books which he had composed, and he himself says: 'I
made abridgments of the chief philosophical works of the ancients, and
left in this manner five books on philology; ten on law; the medical
works of Hippocrates and Galen; the book of plants of Dioskorides; the
books of Rufus, Paulus, Hawi, and Razi; four books on agriculture and
drugs; four books for instruction in the 'Almagest' of Ptolemy, and an
introduction to the study of it, and to the square of Ptolemy; as also
to the works of Plato, Alexander, Themistios, and Al-Farabi. I
purchased all these books, no matter what they cost, and preserved
them in chests, although it would have been more profitable to have
sold them again rather than have kept them.' Ibn Batlan, a clever
physician, was a contemporary of Ibn Ridhwan, and travelled from
Baghdad to Egypt only for the purpose of making his acquaintance, but
the result does not appear to have been satisfactory to either party.
He died A.D. 1063, leaving a number of works on medical and other
subjects.
Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali was born A.D. 1058. He was considered chiefly as
a lawyer and a mystic, but here he will be noticed chiefly as a
philosopher and the author of 'The Ruin of Philosophers,' noticed at
length by Haji Khalfa in his 'Encyclopaedical Dictionary,' under No.
3764. But Ghazali's most celebrated work is 'The Resuscitation of
Religious Sciences,' which is so permeated by the genius of Islam
that, according to the general opinion of scholars, the Muhammadan
religion, if it were to perish, might again be restored from this work
alone. Orthodox fanatics, nevertheless, attacked his works as being
schismatic, and they were even burnt in the Mugrib. He was born at Tus
(the modern Mashad), in Khurasan, and passed his life partly there,
also at Naisapur, Baghdad, Damascus, Egypt, and finally returned to
Tus, where he died A.D. 1111. His works are very numerous, and all of
them are instructive.
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