Ibn Abi Usaybi'a
Arab physician and historian
Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa Muʾaffaq al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn Al-Qāsim Ibn Khalīfa al-Khazrajī (Arabic: ابن أبي أصيبعة; 1203–1270), commonly referred to as Ibn Abi Usaibia (also Usaibi'ah, Usaybea, Usaibi`a, Usaybiʿah, etc.), was a physician from Syria in the 13th century CE. He compiled a biographical encyclopedia of notable physicians, from the Greeks, Romans and Indians up to the year 650AH/1252AD in the Islamic era.
Biography
Ibn Abi-Usaibi'a was born in Damascus, a member of the Arab Banu Khazraj tribe. The son of a physician, he studied medicine in Damascus and Cairo and In 1236, was appointed physician to a new hospital in Cairo, but the following year he took up an offer by ruler of Damascus, of a post in Salkhad, near Damascus, where he lived until his death. His only surviving work is Lives of the Physicians. In that work, he mentions another of his works, but it has not survived.
Lives of the Physicians
The title in Arabic, Uyūn ul-Anbāʾ fī Ṭabaqāt al-Aṭibbā (Arabic: عيون الأنباء في طبقات الأطباء), is translatable loosely and expansively as "Sources of News on Classes of Physicians", commonly translated into English as History of Physicians, Lives of the Physicians, Classes of Physicians, or Biographical Encyclopedia of Physicians. The book opens with a summary of the physicians from ancient Greece, Syria, India and Rome but the main focus of the book's 700 pages is physicians of medieval Islam. A first version appeared in 1245–1246 and was dedicated to the Ayyubid physician and vizier Amīn al-Dawlah. A second and enlarged recension of the work was produced in the last years of the life of the author, and circulated in at least two different versions, as shown by the extant manuscripts.
Editions
The text has been published five times in all.
The public source identifies “Ibn Abi Usaybi'a” as arab physician and historian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Usaybi'a, Arab and physician.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1395668. VIAF identifies the subject as 272709554. The Library of Congress control number is n88294136. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1203, 1270, 1236 and 1245.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ibn Abi Usaybi'a” 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.