Learning, Libraries and Medical Care in Ayyubid Cities

Ayyubid cities offered instruction in religious law and medicine through schools, hospitals and scholars’ homes. Students read texts with teachers, physicians visited patients and endowed income maintained staff and buildings. Some institutions had begun before Ayyubid rule, which lasted in Egypt from 1171 to 1250 and in most of Syria until 1260. Their later histories continued under different rulers.

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Teaching in schools and religious complexes

A madrasa was a school for Islamic learning, often including the study of religious law. Teachers, legal scholars and students used its spaces for instruction, while some institutions also supported worship and other religious activities. In Aleppo, the Al-Firdaws Madrasa was founded in 1235/36 by Dayfa Khatun, an Ayyubid ruler who later served as regent. Its appointed staff included Quran reciters, jurists and members of Sufi groups. The complex combined teaching with worship and other functions, so learning took place within a wider religious setting.

Endowments provided continuing support for teaching and religious services. The founder dedicated revenue-producing property to a stated purpose, and an administrator managed its income. Al-Firdaws’s reciters, jurists and devotional personnel needed regular support. Such arrangements made learning depend on property management as well as the presence of a knowledgeable teacher.

Cairo’s Salihiyya Madrasa, founded in 1242, organised instruction around the four Sunni legal traditions: Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi and Hanbali. Teaching halls and student accommodation occupied two wings. Students studying distinct approaches to Islamic law could therefore be supported within one endowed school. A mausoleum for the sultan was added beside it after his death in 1249.

Reading, books and medical learning

A physician’s house could be a teaching space. Ibn Abi Usaybia described his teacher al-Dakhwar returning from hospital and patient visits to instruct groups at different levels at home. The teacher continued his own study at night. Learners therefore encountered a senior practitioner through sustained reading and explanation alongside his daily medical work.

Books supplied material for that instruction. The Nuri Hospital in Damascus, founded in 1154, held medical texts associated with its endowment. Al-Dakhwar later endowed his own house as a medical school and assigned properties to support it. A collection, a room for classes and continuing income could preserve teaching beyond the lifetime of one physician.

Ibn al-Nafis studied under al-Dakhwar and moved to Egypt in 1236. His commentaries engaged critically with earlier authorities such as Ibn Sina, known in Latin as Avicenna. He rejected the claim that blood crossed through invisible pores between the heart’s right and left chambers, arguing instead for passage through the lungs. Reading an authoritative medical book could therefore lead to disagreement and a new account of how the body worked.

How patients encountered hospital care

Bimaristan was a term for a hospital. The Nuri Bimaristan was founded in 1154 to care for poor and vulnerable patients. Accounts describe patients receiving medicine, food and clothing without charge until they recovered. One account also says that wealthier patients were not barred, though the institution’s charitable purpose focused on people in need.

The Nuri Hospital combined treatment with an environment in which physicians and pupils met. Its founder’s books supported medical study, and the continued use of the building linked Ayyubid practitioners with an older foundation. Patients received care from people whose work also involved reading, teaching and service to rulers.

For patients, treatment involved prescriptions and continued attention. Ibn Jubayr’s account of Damascus describes physicians visiting patients and specifying medicines and food. Records of patients and expenses helped staff organise supplies. The routine joined medical judgement with the practical task of feeding and caring for people over time.

Support for learning and care across political change

Endowed revenue paid for people, supplies and upkeep. At a hospital, food and medicines were recurring costs; at a school, teachers and resident learners needed support. The charitable purpose of the Nuri Hospital directed resources towards treatment, while students could also receive allowances in particular residential institutions. Access depended on encountering and using these specific services.

A later manuscript shows how a learner’s reading could be formally recognised. A copy of Ibn al-Nafis’s commentary on Hippocrates’ Nature of Man, written in Cairo in 1269, includes an ijaza, an authorisation associated with completed study. This belongs to the Mamluk period, after Ayyubid rule in Egypt. At his death in 1288, Ibn al-Nafis endowed books to the Mansuri Hospital, extending his scholarly resources into another institution.

For the wider setting, see Daily Life in Ayyubid Communities: Households, Work and Worship.