Jewish Medical Practitioners in the Medieval Muslim World: A Collective Biography

This book aims to bring together all available biographical data on Jewish medical practitioners (physicians and pharmacists) across all the socio-economic strata, living in urban as well as in rural locations in the Muslim world during the 9th-16th centuries. The biographies are based mainly on information gathered from the wealth of primary sources found in the Cairo Genizah (letters, commercial documents, court orders, lists of donors) and Muslim Arabic sources (biographical dictionaries, historical and geographical literature). Each one of the biographies presented in the book is a small case study! The biographies enable a unique insight into all aspect of life of Jewish physicians/pharmacists in the medieval Muslim world. The analysis of the more than 600 biographies that are presented in the book exposes readers to various issues such as: professional, personal and daily lives; their successes and failures; families and dynasties of practitioners, clarifying their communal and even financial affairs as well as their inter-religious relationships. Both the biographies and the discussion elucidate various views and aspects of the medicine practiced at that period by Muslim, Jews and Christians. Therefore, the book demonstrates an important and different angle on medieval Arabic medicine.