Ibn al-Tilmīdh

Who is Ibn al-Tilmīdh?

Hibat Allāh ibn Ṣāʻid Ibn al-Tilmīdh was a Syriac Christian physician, pharmacist, poet, musician and calligrapher of the medieval Islamic civilization.

Ibn al-Tilmidh worked at the ʻAḍudī hospital in Baghdad where he eventually became its chief physician as well as court physician to the caliph Al-Mustadi, and in charge of licensing physicians in Baghdad. He mastered the Arabic, Persian, Greek and Syriac languages.

He compiled several medical works, the most influential being Al-Aqrābādhīn al-Kabir, a pharmacopeia which became the standard pharmacological work in the hospitals of the Islamic civilization, superseding an earlier work by Sabur ibn Sahl.