Ibn Abi Usaibia, “History of Physicians” now online

I have finally completed the transcription of the 1954 English translation by Lothar Kopf of Ibn Abi Usaibia, History of Physicians.  It may be found here.

I have divided the file into three sections, chapters 1-5, 6-10 and 11-15 respectively.  I have also written an introduction.

All this material is public domain — use it as you will.

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6 thoughts on “Ibn Abi Usaibia, “History of Physicians” now online

  1. This is a great job you have done to those interested in Arabic literature and the history of medicine. People don’t realise how much work such a project takes. Thank you for this and for all your good work.

  2. I appreciate the kind words. Ibn Abi Usaibia has dominated months of my life. But it should make it far easier for people to learn about this subject.

  3. Dear Mr Pearse
    I really do not know how to thank you for this fantastic job you have done. I have the original work in Arabic; it helped me a lot in all my studies in History of Medicine full text of which are published in the above mentioned website.

    I just downloaded this treasure of yours and I would like to thank you again and again. I will certainly acknowledge your courtesy whenever I quote any excerpts from this translation.

    Kind regards

    Rabie E Abdel-Hlim
    Emeritus Professor of Urology
    Kuwait Prize Laureate (History of Medicine)

  4. Dear Dr Abdel-Halim,

    You are very kind! Not many people have the Arabic text either, I find. I wish it was online in Arabic.

    Your website is wonderful — thank you for making that available.

    Do feel free to use the translation in any way you like. If you want to put a copy on your site, do feel free. It is public domain, so it doesn’t belong to me.

    Ibn Abi Usaibia is such an interesting work! I hope that, now that 2bn people can see it in English, it will become much better known!

  5. Dear Dr. Pearse
    I was in search of an English translation of this great work for quite long time. You have done great service to the society of learners like me, who are not fully conversant with the Arabic language. I am developing a book on scholars of the middle ages, for which ibn Abi Usaibi’a is one of the major sources. Thank you very much.
    Regards
    Khadim Ali Hashmi

  6. Dear Dr Hashmi,

    Thank you so much for taking the time to write. I am glad that the translation is useful. It is a remarkable text, don’t you think?

    A word of caution: the translator seems to have omitted some portions of the text. I discovered this year that a paragraph on the Greek philosopher Porphyry, present in the Muller edition, is not in this translation. I always knew that the translator omitted poetry, but he signals this. So … we must be a little careful. It was never revised for publication, after all.

    All the best,

    Roger Pearse

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