Al-Zahrawi
Arab Andalusian physician, surgeon and chemist (936–1013)
Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-'Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-Ansari (c. 936–1013), popularly known as al-Zahrawi, Latinised as Albucasis or Abulcasis (from Arabic Abū al-Qāsim), was an Arab physician, surgeon and chemist from al-Andalus. He is considered one of the greatest surgeons of the Middle Ages.
Al-Zahrawi's principal work is the Kitab 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 period, where some of his discoveries are still applied in medicine to this day. 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 surgeries.
Biography
Al-Zahrawi was born in the city of Azahara, 8 kilometers northwest of Cordoba, Andalusia. His birth date is not known for sure, however, scholars agree that he was born around 936, the year his birthplace city of Azahara was founded.
The public source identifies “Al-Zahrawi” as arab Andalusian physician, surgeon and chemist (936–1013). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Al-Zahrawi, Arab and Andalusian.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q311495. VIAF identifies the subject as 56636061. The Library of Congress control number is n80103641. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Al-Zahrawi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.