Ismail Jurjani

Zayn al-Din Ismail ibn al-Husayn al-Jurjani was born around 1042 in Jurjan (Gorgan), a city on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, in present-day Iran. Sources give his year of birth anywhere between 1040 and 1044. He studied in Jurjan and then continued his education in Nishapur, Rayy, Isfahan, Qum and Khuzestan; his chief teacher is considered to be the Nishapur physician Abu al-Qasim Abd al-Rahman ibn Ali ibn Abi Sadiq, known as the «second Hippocrates».

Around 1110 he moved to Khwarazm and became court physician to the Khwarazmshah Qutb al-Din Muhammad (1097–1127), and later served his son and successor Ala al-Din Atsiz (1127–1156).

The «Zakhira-yi Khwarazmshahi» («Treasure of the Khwarazmshah»), dedicated to the ruler, was completed in 1110. It is the largest medical encyclopedia in Persian, continuing the tradition of Galen: its preface and ten books cover anatomy, the signs of disease and the pulse, hygiene, fevers, surgery, skin diseases, poisons and pharmacology.

The author later made shorter versions: the Persian «Khafi-yi Ala'i» and the Arabic «al-Aghraz al-tibbiyya wa-l-mabahith al-'ala'iyya», written at the request of Atsiz's vizier between 1128 and 1136. He also translated the «Zakhira» into Arabic himself.

Late in life al-Jurjani moved to Merv, the capital of the Seljuk sultan Sanjar, and lived there until his death. He died in Merv in 1136–1137 (531 AH) at about ninety-four.

Manuscripts of the «Zakhira» are held in many libraries around the world; the work was translated into Hebrew, Turkish and Urdu and was published in Iran in the twentieth century. The book also contains information on how Khwarazm's climate affected disease and on local medicinal plants.