Medicine and Treatment in Umayyad Cordoba

Medical learning under Umayyad rule is documented in distinct regional settings. Damascus was the Syrian capital of the Umayyad caliphate, the Muslim empire ruled by caliphs, from 661 to 750, while Córdoba in al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled part of Iberia, became the center of a separate Umayyad emirate in 756; its ruler declared a caliphate in 929. The eastern accounts describe physicians serving rulers; Cordoban medical writing becomes especially detailed around 1000, with work on drugs, seasonal advice and surgery.

A medieval collection of physicians’ biographies recounts that Ibn Uthāl, a Christian doctor in Damascus, was favored by Caliph Muʿāwiya for his knowledge of simple and compound drugs. The same collection describes Tayādhūq in Iraq, who advised al-Ḥajjāj, the governor appointed over Iraq by Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik. His advice included eating well-cooked meat, chewing thoroughly and taking medicine only when ill. The paired accounts place drug knowledge and dietary counsel within the households and courts of two eastern rulers.

Tenth-century Cordoban authors described a learned community working with Greek writings and Arabic medical texts. Al-Zahrawi’s surgical chapters later set out procedures step by step, leaving examples of medical scholarship and practical instruction in al-Andalus.

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Reading plants and medical texts

Medical learning in Córdoba included identifying substances as well as translating words. In 949, the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII sent an illustrated Greek copy of Dioscorides’ De materia medica to the Cordoban ruler ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III. Greek was not widely understood at court, so the monk Nicholas arrived in 951. He worked with court physicians, including the Jewish physician and official Ḥasdāy ibn Shaprūṭ, to clarify plant names that had remained uncertain in earlier Arabic versions. A botanical name became useful only when readers could connect the description to a plant they could recognize.

The work was collaborative: Nicholas brought Greek knowledge, while the physicians could compare the descriptions with the plants and terminology known in al-Andalus. This work joined a longer history of translating Greek medical writings into Arabic. Another Cordoban physician, Ibn Juljul, born in 944, wrote about the history of physicians and commented on Dioscorides. His work shows local medical scholarship extending beyond the court’s translation effort.

Remedies, seasons and everyday advice

Medical writing dealt with remedies, food and bodily condition alongside operations. A single or “simple” drug was one substance; a compound remedy combined ingredients. Choosing the right plant or mineral mattered because names could refer to different materials in different places. The discussion around Dioscorides therefore involved a practical problem: identifying, obtaining and preparing the substance described in a book.

The Calendar of Córdoba, dated 961, puts medical advice alongside seasonal work. Its February entry describes planting saffron and summer vegetables and says that people may undergo bloodletting, or deliberate removal of blood, and take medicine if needed, but that medicines should not be too strong.

Al-Zahrawi’s Kitāb al-Taṣrīf likewise ranged well beyond surgery. The medical encyclopedia contains thirty treatises, and its final volume treats surgery and instruments. Other treatises addressed drugs, diet and daily routines.

Al-Zahrawi and bladder-stone surgery

Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrawi, who lived about 936–1013, worked in al-Andalus near the end of Umayyad rule. His account of bladder stones explains how an operator should identify and reach a stone before cutting. A bladder stone is a hard deposit inside the bladder; its size and surface affected whether it could be removed whole. Al-Zahrawi says the condition occurred mostly in boys and that extraction was easiest before age fourteen, becoming harder in older patients.

The translated chapter begins by positioning the patient upright and searching for the stone by touch. If the operator could feel it from outside, he made an incision in the perineum, the area between the anus and the genitals, toward the bladder neck, the outlet leading into the tube that carries urine out of the body. If he could not find it by external touch, he used a finger through the rectum to guide the stone toward that outlet. During the incision, an assistant pressed on the lower abdomen to keep the bladder compressed while the operator held the stone near its outlet with a finger.

The instrument matched the stone. A smooth, rounded surface might slide out more easily, while an angular stone could catch. Al-Zahrawi recommends serrated forceps to grip a difficult stone, or a slender curved tool to work beneath it. For a very large stone, he describes breaking it inside the bladder and removing it in pieces rather than making an oversized incision, which he warns could lead to death or permanent loss of bladder control.

Care after the operation

Al-Zahrawi also describes the care that followed extraction. He instructs the operator to watch for swelling or infection and to notice blood in the urine, which could signal a clot obstructing its flow. His directions include clearing a clot, washing the wound with vinegar, water and salt, then applying appropriate remedies until it heals. He also says to bind the patient’s thighs together so that medicines applied to the wound stay in place. The chapter therefore follows the patient from examination and surgery through wound care.

Later circulation of the surgical text

In the twelfth century, Gerard of Cremona translated al-Zahrawi’s final surgical volume into Latin. A fourteenth-century parchment manuscript now catalogued by the British Library preserves that translation with colored drawings of surgical instruments. It documents the later circulation of Cordoban surgical writing in Latin medical study.