CLAS 3239 | Ancient Medicine: The Classical Roots of the Medical Humanities: Islamic Medical Illustrations

Arabisch handschrift over chirurgie met gedetailleerde afbeeldingen van medische instrumenten. Kitab al-tasrif, door Abu ’l-Qasim al-Zahrawi uit Granada (‘Albucasis’, 936–1013).
Collectie Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden.

Doctor taking woman's pulse. Avicenna's Canon manuscript. Canon of Medicine, al-qanun Fi-T-Tibb. Binding board of manuscript of Avicenna's Canon. Or Arabic MS 155 Lacquer 1632. Image: Wellcome Library, London.

Kitāb al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (MS A 53 Folio 386b) (The Canon on Medicine) كتاب القانون فى الطب by Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh Ibn Sīnā known to Europeans as Avicenna (d. 1037/428 H). The illuminated opening of the fourth book. The text is written on a thin brown paper in small to very small nasta‘liq,with headings in naskh. Black ink with headings in red. frame of blue, black and red ink and gilt has been drawn around the text area; a larger frame of a single blue ink line is also on the bordering frame. Undated; probably Iran, beginning of 15th century.

Manuscript of al-Bīrūnī, Al-Athār al-Bāqiyah `an al-Qurūn al-Khāliyah, (Chronology of the Ancient Nations) MS 161, 1307. Edinburgh University. Depicting birth of either "Emperor Augustus" or Ahmad Ibn Sahl, who was a leader of a revolution against the Sāmānid ruler Nasr II (914-943 CE) of Transaxiana by post-mortem Caesarean section. Image at University of Edinburgh Image database

The arterial figure, shown frontally with the internal organs indicated in opaque watercolours. An undated and unsigned copy, probably 15th or early 16th-century. Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān (MS P 19)
(The Anatomy of the Human Body)
تشريح بدن انسان by Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf Ibn Ilyās (fl. ca. 1390). MS P 19, fol. 18a. Image at NLM.

A nearly full-page painting of the ‘toothworm’ in opaque watercolours, painted over an Arabic treatise on geomancy. An undated and unsigned fragment of a manuscript (18th century CE?). MS. Arab. d.256, folio 1a