Abū Dāwūd, Sulaymān ibn Ḥassān Ibn Juljul (Arabic: سليمان بن حسان ابن جلجل) (c. 944 Córdoba, Spain, – c. 994) was an influential Andalusian Muslim physician and pharmacologist who wrote an important book on the history of medicine. His works on pharmacology were frequently quoted by physicians in Muslim Spain during the 10th and 11th centuries. Some of his works were later studied by Albertus Magnus, like De secretis, but were attributed to a Latinized version of his name, Gilgil.
Life
Starting from the age of fourteen, Ibn Juljul studied medicine for ten years working under the physician Hasdai ibn Shaprut. He later became the personal physician of Caliph Hisham II, and continued working as a teacher of medicine. Ibn al-Baghunish of Toledo was one of his disciples.
Works
Ibn Juljul's major book is Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ w’al-hukamā’ (Generations of physicians and Wise Men, Arabic: طبقات الأطباء والحكماء) which is an important work on the history of medicine using both Eastern and Western sources. The book includes 57 biographies of famous Greek, Islamic, African, and Spanish physicians and philosophers, and contains interesting information on the earliest accounts of Syriac translations into Arabic. The included biographies of contemporary Spanish physicians are notable because they give a clear insight about life in Cordoba during the 10th century. One of the biographies is that of Mohammed ibn Abdun al-Jabali, Ibn Juljul's contemporary and colleague physician at the court of Cordoba. Composed in 377/987, the Ṭabaqāt is considered to be the second oldest collection of biographies of physicians written in Arabic, where the earliest being Taʾrīkh al-aṭibbāʾ by Ishaq ibn Hunayn. The Ṭabaqāt also records some of Ibn Juljul's thoughts on the decline of science in the Eastern Islamic provinces. Ibn Juljul states that:
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The Abbasid empire was weakened by the power of the Daylamites and Turks, who were not concerned with science: scholars appear only in states whose kings seek knowledge.
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Ibn Juljul also wrote a number of different treatises and letters concerning pharmacology, and wrote multiple translations and commentaries on the works of Dioscorides.
He is Sulayman b. Hassan, Abu Dawood. In spite of the ‘Bell’ Arabic meaning in Ibn Juljul’s name and the lack of information on his lineage, it appears to be a Spanish name of one of his great grand fathers giving credence to the idea that he was a native Iberian Muslim whose ancestors had embraced Islam after it spread in Andalusia. Sources detailing his life, studies and teachers are also scarce except for a report which mentioned that he was from Cordova where he learnt Hadith in its grand Mosque and in Al-Zahra mosque. However, later biographers mentioned his birth in Toledo in 332 H/943 CE and his later migration, studying and death in Cordova. It was in the scientifically vibrant city of Cordova where Ibn Juljul learnt Arabic Language syntax and morphology from renowned scholars. He began learning medicine at the age of 14 years with a group of Hellenists presided over by Hasday Ibn Shapur, the Jewish physician of the royal court and vizier of the Caliph `Abd al-Rahman III.
Though he lived during the reigns of `Abdul Rahman and Al-Mustansir, during which he contributed abundantly, he acquired fame and recognition after he became close to Al-Mu’ayad Hisham I (366-399H) who appointed him as his court physician. In addition to his competence in medical practice, he showed profound expertise in concocting medicaments. It was during Al-Mu’ayyad’s reign that he wrote most of his books. There occurred rapid expansion of pharmacology and Hispano-Arabic botany during that period and Ibn Juljul is credited with much of the extensive research that was carried out in the field. Nothing has been substantiated with regards to the reports that he toured botanizing in the Islamic world; available evidence supports the view that he never ventured out of Cordova except for his training under al-Bayhaqi in Seville.
It did not matter much whether one was a physician or a pharmacologist, in fact the two professions were so related that physicians then synthesized medicaments themselves and administered them to patients after diagnosing their diseases. It has been reported that Ibn Juljul evinced so deep an interest in pharmacology that he practiced the techniques of coating pills and tablets with rose-water or perfuming them to become more palatable for intake.
“God has created (the means of) healing and distributed them among the plants that grow on earth, among the animals that walk or crawl on earth or swim in the water and among the minerals that are hidden in the womb of the earth. In all of that there is healing, pity and kindness.” Ibn Juljul
However, his prominence followed his association with the group that worked for years tirelessly on a new translation of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, in spite of the availability of a translation done in Baghdad by Istifan b. Basil (Stephen, the son of Basilius). Though some opine that the effort aimed primarily at elaborating an Andalusian nomenclature, including Roman variations, of plant names and adapting Basil’s text to Iberian bio-geography, it is mentioned in Ibn Abi Usaybi`a’s book that Ibn Juljul had a different idea about the main motive behind the project. There he opined that in spite of the fact that Hunayn b. Ishaq crosschecked Istifan’s translation and licensed it, the latter had left many Greek terms and plant names un-translated in the hope that God would provide someone knowledgeable of their corresponding meanings in Arabic to translate the same. People, till then, devised conventional terms for such medicines or named them according to etymological bases. Istifan’s hope materialized in that project after his work was used for quite some time but only as far as it was intelligible. The effort was guided mainly by a Byzantine Monk, Nicolas, who was dispatched by the Byzantine Emperor upon the request of the Caliph in Cordova due to the dearth of Greek speakers in Andalusia. Whether the Monk took part in the actual translation of the book or just taught Greek to enthusiasts in Cordova, is not clear but it is certain that the famousJewish physician of the royal court, Ibn Shapur, headed the group in the project. The Andalusian version of Dioscorides as made by Nicolas exists in a Bodleian manuscript.
However, this acted like a stimulus for Ibn Juljul and he continued further after the project and authored a book which came as an explanation of the drugs and plants described by Dioscordes. The book Tafsir Asma’ al-Adwiya al-Mufrada min Kitab Diyusquridus (Explanation of the Names of the Simple Drugs from Dioscorides’ Book), written in 982 CE, from which only a fragment is preserved, contained the transcription of the Greek names of 317 simple medicines, their translation into Arabic and their identification. The book also included the corresponding Latin and Berber terminologies for the medicinal plants that came in the book. Scholars believe that the significance of this book lies in the fact that it remained for quite sometime as a primary reference book for those who worked in pharmacology in Andalusia and in the details it contained on the mode of arrival of Dioscorides’ book to Cordova.
His research and interest in the field continued further and became so profound and meticulous that he authored another book which described a number of medicinal plants found in Spain land peculiarly rich and varied in its flora that didn’t figure in Dioscorides’ work. This was the Maqala fi Dhikr al-Adwiya al-Mufrada lam Yadhkurha Diyusquridus (Treatise on the Samples not Mentioned by Dioscorides), It included 62 simple medicines not mentioned in Dioscorides’ Materia Medica.
He also wrote a book on anecdotes for many poisons known during his period. It described the types of anecdotes, their constituent drugs, their locations, and administration. It contained a beautiful description of the paralysis that arises from excessive ingestion of the seeds of Lathyrus Sativus known commonly as grass pea, widely grown and consumed in Spain and other parts of the world.
At the age of 45, Ibn Juljul authored a chronicle on the biographies of physicians, Kitab tabaqat al-atibba’ wa al-hukama’ (The Chronicle of Physicians and Wise Men). In spite of the chronological errors that came in the book, it yet provides interesting information about the oldest translations into Arabic, in the time of the Caliph `Umar b. Abdul Aziz. It is also recognized as the oldest extant summary in Arabic on the history of medicine after Ishaq b. Hunayn’s Ta`rikh al-Atibba’ wa al-Falasifah (History of the Physicians). He used earlier works as sources for the contents of the book including Albumaser’s Kitab al-Uluf and Paulus Orosius’ Against the Pagans in addition to anecdotes he narrated through his own sources. In spite of the presence of tall and improbable tales in the book that don’t relate much to any scientific validity, it still proved to be the single most important biographical book on Andalusian physicians of his period; it also recounted some interesting medical anecdotes. It categorized physicians according to ethno-creedal basis that he identified as nine categories under which he enumerated thirty one Asians and many African and Andalusians. The book presented the history of the medical profession from the time of Aesculapius to Ibn Juljul’s time. The work on the book started following a request of an Umayyad prince to whom it was gifted. It was published by Fu’ad Syed in 1955 among the publications of the French Institute in Cairo.
There are other works of Ibn Juljul which include Risalat al-Tabyin fi-ma Ghalata fihi ba`d al-Mutatabbibin (Treatise on the Explanation of the Errors of Some Physicians). The book discussed some medical practices commonly used by physicians and commented on their practicality.
His date of death is not definite but his work in the royal court, his writing the Physicians’ biographies book published in the year 377H and his being a teacher of Sa`eed b. Muhammad, who was born in the year 369H, indicates that he died after 384H/ 994CE.
Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician and one of the first pharma-botanists is known mainly for his book De Materia Medica, a medical codex listing hundreds of medicinal substances. The Arabs admired Dioscorides’ legacy however they were very aware that their own inventory of drugs was much larger than his.
The Andalusian physician Ibn Juljul (944 – after 994) became famous on account of several medical treaties which he wrote. He devoted most of his time to identifying the drugs listed in Dioscorides’ monumental work, and thereafter wrote: “An article on the drugs not mentioned in Dioscorides’ book. . .”
This article analyzes and discusses the names of those drugs and presents an English translation of this work. The absence of these substances from Dioscorides’ codex, and from other classical sources of the pre-Islamic period (Theophrastus, Pliny, Galen, Paul of Aegina), is a prime reason for ascribing their distribution to the Arabs.
Ibn Juljul's list reflects the major change that took place in the inventory of Galeno-Arabic drugs after the Islamic conquests; about one hundred new substances. Some of these substances, such as the myrobalan, soon became among the most common and popular drugs in the practical pharmacology of the Middle Ages. The fact that about half of the substances not mentioned by Dioscorides are of “Indian” origin should be seen against the background of the influence of the Ayurvedic medical culture, to which the Arabs were exposed alongside the Greek.
Ibn Juljul, Sulaymān Ibn Hasan (944-994) course of studies is known through his autobiography, preserved by Ibn al-Abbar. He studied medicine from the age of fourteen to twentyfour with a group of Hellenists that had formed in Cordoba around the mink Nicolas and was presided over by the Jewish physician and vizier of ‘Abd al-Rahman III, Hasday ibn Shaprut. Later he was the personal physician of Caliph Hisham II (976-1009). The famous pharmacologist Ibn al-Baghunish was his disciple.
Among Ibn Juljul’s works is Tabaqāt al atibbāʾ wa’l-hukamả (“Generations of physicians and Wise Men”). It is the oldest and most complete extant summary in Arabic except for the work on the same subject written by Ishaq ibn Hunayn, which is inferior to that of Ibn Juljul—on the history of medicine. It is of particular interest because Ibn Juljul uses both Eastern sources (Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, Abu Ma’shar) and Western ones. The latter had been translated into Arabic from Latin at Córdoba in the eighth and ninth centuries and include Orosius, St. Isidore, Christian physicians, and anonymous authors who served the first Andalusian emirs. The work has frequent chronological mistakes, especially when it deals with the earliest periods, but it never lacks interset.
The Tabagat contains fifty-seven biographiesà grouped in nine generations. Thirty-one are of oriental authors: Hermes I, Hermes II, and Hermes III, Asclepiades, Apollon, Hippocrates, Discorides, Plato, Aristoltle, Socrates, Democritus, Ptolemy, Cato, Euclid, Galen, Al-Hārith al-Thaqafi, Ibn Abi Rumtha, Ibn Abhar, Masarjawayhi, Bakhtīshūʿ, Jabril, Yuhanna ibn Māsawayhi, Yhannā ibn al-Bitriq, Hunaya ibn Ishāq, al-Kindi, Thābit ibn Qurra, Qusta ibn Lūqā, al-Rāzī, Thabit ibn Sinān, Ibn Wasif, and Nastās ibn Jurahy. The rest of the biographies are of African and Spanish scholars, who generally are less well-known than the Eastern ones. Since he knew many of the latter and possibly attended some of them, there is no reason to question the details given concerning their behavior or illnesses. The remarks on these topics are not real clinical histories but transmit details (allergic asthma, dysentery, and so on) that give a clear idea of life in Cordoba in the tenth century.
Ibn Juljul also provides interesting information about the oldest Eastern translations into Arabic, in the time of Caliph ‘Umar II (717-719), when he states that the latter ordered the translation from Syriac of the work of the Alexandrian physician Ahran ibn A’yan (fl. seventh century). One should not disdain his reflections on the causes hindering the development of science when, referring to the East, he justifies not mentioning more scholars from this region after al-Radi’s caliphate (d. 940), saying:
In later reigns there was no notable man known for his mastery or famous for his scientific contributions. The Abbasid empire was weakened by the power of the Daylamites and Turks, who were not concerned with science: scholars appear only in states whose kings seek knowledge [Tabaqāt, p. 116].
Tafsir asmāʾ al-adwiya al-mufrada min kitab Diyusquridus, written in 982, may concern a copy of Dioscorides’ Materia medica. In it is a text, quite often copied, on the vicissitudes of the Arabic translation of the famous Greek work. Maqāla fi dhikr al-adwiya al-mufrada lam yadhkurhā Diyusqūridūs is a complement to Dioscorides’ Materia medica. Maqala fi adwiyat al-tiryaq concerns therica. Risalat al-tabyin fi ma ghalata fihi baʿd al-mutatabbibin probably dealt with errors committed by quacks.
Ibn Juljul may be the author of the De secretis quoted by Albertus Magnus in hisDe sententiis antiquorum et de materia metallorum (De mineralibus III, 1. 4), which is attributed to a certain Gilgil.
The work of Ibn Juljul must have remained popular in Muslim Spain for a long time; otherwise we could not account for the frequent references given by a botanist such as the unnamed Spanish Muslim studied by Asin Palacios.
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