Masawaiyh
Assyrian physician
Yuhanna ibn Masawaih (circa 777–857), (Arabic: يوحنا بن ماسويه), also written Ibn Masawaih, Masawaiyh, and in Latin Janus Damascenus, or Mesue, Masuya, Mesue Major, Msuya, and Mesuë the Elder was an Assyrian or Persian physician, trained by Jabril ibn Bukhtishu, who was a member of the Church of the East, from the Academy of Gondishapur. According to The Canon of Medicine for Avicenna and 'Uyun al-Anba for the medieval Arab historian ibn Abi Usaybi'a, Masawaiyh's father was from Khuzestan and his mother was a Slav.
Life
Born in 777 as the son of a pharmacist and physician from Gundeshapur, he came to Baghdad and studied under Jabril ibn Bukhtishu.
He became director of a hospital in Baghdad, and was personal physician to four Abbasid caliphs. He composed medical treatises on several topics, including ophthalmology, fevers, leprosy, headache, melancholia, dietetics, the testing of physicians, and medical aphorisms. One of Masawaiyh's treatises concerns aromatics, entitled, On Simple Aromatic Substances.
It was reported that Ibn Masawayh regularly held an assembly where he consulted with patients and discussed subjects with his pupils. Ibn Masawayh attracted considerable audiences, having acquired a reputation for repartee.
He was also the teacher of Hunayn ibn Ishaq. He translated various Greek medical works into Syriac, but wrote his own work in Arabic.
The public source identifies “Masawaiyh” as assyrian physician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Masawaiyh, Assyrian and physician.
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This entry incorporates text from “Masawaiyh” 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.