The Andalusian physician known in Europe as Albucasis, the greatest surgeon of the medieval world, whose surgical encyclopedia shaped medicine for five centuries.
Life
Al-Zahrawi (c. 936–1013), court physician in Cordoba, wrote al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume medical encyclopedia whose final book on surgery — illustrated with the instruments he designed, many still recognizable — was without parallel. Translated into Latin, it became a standard surgical text in European universities into the Renaissance. He pioneered techniques across surgery, obstetrics, and dentistry, and is honored as a father of modern surgery.