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Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-'Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-AnsariHamarneh, Sami Khalaf; Sonnedecker, Glenn Allen (1963). A Pharmaceutical View of Abulcasis Al-Zahrāwī in Moorish Spain: With Special Reference to the "Adhān,". Brill Archive. p. 15. (; c. 936–1013), popularly known as al-Zahrawi (الزهراوي), Latinised as Albucasis or Abulcasis (from Arabic Abū al-Qāsim), was an Arabs physician, surgeon and chemist from al-Andalus. He is considered one of the greatest surgeons of the Middle Ages.*Meri, Josef W. (2005). Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 783."The greatest surgeon of the medieval ages was Abu'l-Qasim az Zahrawi (d. 1010), a most important representative of the Andalusian school."
Krebs, Robert E. (2004). Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 95." Al-Zahrawi (930 or 963–1013 C.E.), also known as Abu-Al Quasim Khalaf ibn'Abbas al-Zahrawi, was a court physician.
Al-Zahrawi's principal work is the Al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices. The surgery chapter of this work was later translated into Latin, attaining popularity and becoming the standard textbook in Europe for the next five hundred years. Al-Zahrawi's pioneering contributions to the field of surgical procedures and instruments had an enormous impact in the East and West well into the Modern era, where some of his discoveries are still applied in medicine to this day. (2025). 9780816048878, Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9780816048878 He pioneered the use of catgut for internal stitches, and his surgical instruments are still used today to treat people.
He was the first physician to identify the hereditary nature of haemophilia and describe an abdominal pregnancy, a subtype of ectopic pregnancy that in those days was a fatal affliction, and was first to discover the root cause of paralysis. He also developed surgical devices for Caesarean sections and Cataract surgery.
He lived most of his life in Cordoba. It is also where he studied, taught and practiced medicine and surgery until shortly before his death in about 1013, two years after the sacking of Azahara.
Few details remain regarding his life, aside from his published work, due to the destruction of El-Zahra during later Castillian-Andalusian conflicts. His name first appears in the writings of Abu Muhammad bin Hazm (993–1064), who listed him among the greatest physicians of Moorish Spain. But we have the first detailed biography of al-Zahrawī from al-Ḥumaydī's Jadhwat al-Muqtabis ( On Andalusian Savants), completed six decades after al-Zahrawi's death.
Al-Zahrawi was a court physician to the Al-Andalus caliph Al-Hakam II. He was a contemporary or near contemporary of Andalusian chemists such as Ibn al-Wafid, al-Majriti and Artephius. He devoted his entire life and genius to the advancement of medicine as a whole and surgery in particular. As a court physician, Zahrawi had access to the most advanced medical knowledge and resources of the time, allowing him to develop new techniques and instruments for surgical procedures. Zahrawi's time as a court physician to Al-Hakam II allowed him to develop his skills and knowledge as a physician and surgeon, and to make significant contributions to the field of medicine. His work helped to lay the foundation for modern surgical techniques and has had a lasting impact on the practice of medicine.Azzedine M. Layachi, Abulcasis: The Father of Modern Surgery, The Muslim World, Vol. 89, No. 2 (April 1999), pp. 91-105.Michael H. Morgan, Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists, National Geographic Society, 2007, pp. 42-45
While al-Zahrawi never performed the surgical procedure of tracheotomy, he did treat a slave girl who had cut her own throat in a suicide attempt. Al-Zahrawi sewed up the wound and the girl recovered, thereby proving that an incision in the larynx could heal. In describing this important case-history he wrote:
Al-Zahrawi also pioneered neurosurgery and neurological diagnosis. He is known to have performed surgical treatments of head injuries, skull fractures, spinal injuries, hydrocephalus, subdural effusions and headache. The first clinical description of an operative procedure for hydrocephalus was given by Al-Zahrawi who clearly describes the evacuation of superficial intracranial fluid in hydrocephalic children.
The work contained data that had accumulated during a career that spanned almost 50 years of training, teaching and practice. In it he also wrote of the importance of a positive doctor-patient relationship and wrote affectionately of his students, whom he referred to as "my children". He also emphasized the importance of treating patients irrespective of their social status. He encouraged the close observation of individual cases in order to make the most accurate diagnosis and the best possible treatment.
Not always properly credited, modern evaluation of Kitab al-Tasrif manuscript has revealed on early descriptions of some medical procedures that were ascribed to later physicians.Karagِzoğlu, Bahattin (2017). Science and Technology from Global and Historical Perspectives. Springer. p. 155."This last volume is a surgical manual describing surgical instruments, supplies, and procedures. Scholars studying this manual are discovering references to procedures previously believed to belong to more modern times." For example, Al-Zahrawi's Kitab al-Tasrif described both what would later become known as "Kocher's method" for treating a dislocated shoulder and "Walcher position" in obstetrics. Moreover, the Kitab al-Tasrif described how to ligature blood vessels almost 600 years before Ambroise Paré, and was the first recorded book to explain the hereditary nature of haemophilia. It was also the first to describe a surgical procedure for ligating the temporal artery for migraine, also almost 600 years before Pare recorded that he had ligated his own temporal artery for headache that conforms to current descriptions of migraine. Al-Zahrawi was, therefore, the first to describe the migraine surgery procedure that is enjoying a revival in the 21st century, spearheaded by Elliot Shevel, a South African surgeon.
The book was translated into Latin in the 12th century by Gerard of Cremona. It soon found popularity in Europe and became a standard text in all major Medical universities like those of Salerno and Montpellier.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." It remained the primary source on surgery in Europe for the next 500 years, and as the historian of medicine, Arturo Castiglioni, has put it: al-Zahrawi's treatise "in surgery held the same authority as did the Canon of Avicenna in medicine".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."
Al-Zahrawi claims that his knowledge comes from careful reading of previous medical texts as well as his own experience: “...whatever skill I have, I have derived for myself by my long reading of the books of the Ancients and my thirst to understand them until I extracted the knowledge of it from them. Then through the whole of my life I have adhered to experience and practice... I have made it accessible for you and rescued it from the abyss of prolixity".Abū Al-Qāsim Khalaf Ibn ʾabbās Al-Zahrāwī. Albucasis on Surgery and Instruments. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. (676)
In the beginning of his book, al-Zahrawi states that the reason for writing this treatise was the degree of underdevelopment surgery had reached in the Islamic world, and the low status it held amongst physicians at the time. Al-Zahrawi ascribed such decline to a lack of anatomical knowledge and a misunderstanding of the human physiology.
Noting the importance of anatomy he wrote:Selin, Helaine (2008). Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 1545.
In urology, al-Zahrawi wrote about taking stones out of the bladder. By inventing a new instrument, an early form of the lithotrite which he called "Michaab", he was able to crush the stone inside the bladder without the need for a surgical incision. His technique was important for the development of lithotomy, and an improvement over the existing techniques in Europe which caused severe pain for the patient, and came with high death rates.
In dentistry and periodontics, al-Zahrawi had the most significant contribution out of all Muslim physicians, and his book contained the earliest illustrations of dental instruments. He was known to use gold and silver wires to ligate loosened teeth,Becker, Marshall Joseph; Turfa, Jean MacIntosh (2017). The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry: The Golden Smile Through the Ages. Taylor & Francis. p. 146. and has been credited as the first to use replantation in the history of dentistry.Ingle, John Ide; Baumgartner, J. Craig (2008). Ingle's Endodontics. PMPH-USA. p. 1281."The individual first credited with the principle of extraction and replantation was an Arabian physician by the name of Abulcasis who practiced in the eleventh century."Ingle, John Ide; Bakland, Leif K. (2002). Endodontics. PMPH-USA. p. 727."Abulcasis, an Arabian physician practicing in the eleventh century, is the first credited with recording the principle of extraction/replantation." He also invented instruments to scale the calculus from the teeth, a procedure he recommended as a prevention from periodontal disease.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."
Al-Zahrawi introduced over 200 surgical instruments, which include, among others, different kinds of scalpels, retractors, , pincers, specula, and also instruments designed for his favoured techniques of cauterization and ligature. He also invented hooks with a double tip for use in surgery. Many of these instruments were never used before by any previous surgeons.
His use of catgut for internal stitching is still practised in modern surgery. Catgut appears to be the only natural substance capable of dissolving and is acceptable by the body, an observation Al-Zahrawi discovered after his monkey ate the strings of his oud. Al-Zahrawi also invented the forceps for extracting a dead fetus, as illustrated in the Kitab al-Tasrif.Ingrid Hehmeyer and Aliya Khan (2007). "Islam's forgotten contributions to medical science", Canadian Medical Association Journal 176 (10).
Al-Zahrawi also touched upon the subject of cosmetics and dedicated a chapter for it in his medical encyclopedia. As the treatise was translated into Latin, the cosmetic chapter was used in the West. Al-Zahrawi considered cosmetics a branch of medicine, which he called "Medicine of Beauty" ( Adwiyat al-Zinah).Epstein, Samuel; Fitzgerald, Randall (2011). Healthy Beauty: Your Guide to Ingredients to Avoid and Products You Can Trust. BenBella Books, Inc. He deals with perfumes, scented aromatics and incense. He also invented perfumed sticks rolled and pressed in special molds, perhaps the earliest antecedents of present-day , and solid .Snodgrass, Mary Ellen (2015). World Clothing and Fashion: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Social Influence. Routledge. p. 153.
The chief influence of Albucasis on the medical system of Europe was that his lucidity and method of presentation awakened a prepossession in favour of Arabic literature among the scholars of the West: the methods of Albucasis eclipsed those of Galen and maintained a dominant position in medical Europe for five hundred years, i.e long after it had passed its usefulness. He, however, helped to raise the status of surgery in Christian Europe; in his book on fractures and luxations, he states that 'this part of surgery has passed into the hands of vulgar and uncultivated minds, for which reason it has fallen into contempt.' The surgery of Albucasis became firmly grafted on Europe after the time of Guy de Chauliac (d.1368).
In the 14th century, the medieval France surgeon Guy de Chauliac quoted al-Tasrif over 200 times. Pietro Argallata (d. 1453) described Al-Zahrawi as "without doubt the chief of all surgeons". Al-Zahrawi's influence continued for at least five centuries, extending into the Renaissance, evidenced by al-Tasrif's frequent reference by French surgeon Jacques Daléchamps (1513–1588).
The street in Córdoba where he lived is named in his honor as "Calle Albucasis". On this street he lived in house no. 6, which is preserved today by the Spanish Tourist Board with a bronze plaque (awarded in January 1977) which reads: "This was the house where Al-Zahrawi lived."
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