Abū Bakr Muhammad al-Rāzī's (Rhazes) medical works

Abstract

A-Rāzī (Rhazes, with variants, in Medieval Latin), Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā' (al-Rayy, close to modern Teherān, Irān, A.D. 865-925), is rightly considered one of the greatest medical practitioners and writers in the period between Galen and the renaissance reemergence of medicine as an empirical discipline (apart from his ranking as one of the most original and independent-minded philosophers of Islām). The following biobibliographical survey - in the format of an encyclopaedia article - will focus on those of his medical works which either had the greatest impact on posterity and/or attest most solidly to al-Rāzī's outstanding combination of textual scholarship and clinical observation, outstanding at least with reference to the horizon of his culture.