Al-Ruhawi

Who is Al-Ruhawi?

Ishāq ibn ʻAlī al-Ruhāwī was a 9th-century Arab physician and the author of the first medical ethics book in Islamic medicine.

His Ethics of the Physician contains the first documented description of a peer review process, where the notes of a practising Islamic physician were reviewed by peers and the physician could face a lawsuit from a maltreated patient if the reviews were negative.

Al-Ruhawi was probably from Al-Ruha, modern-day Şanlıurfa in Turkey, close to the border with Syria, which is often simply known as Urfa. He was born a Christian, possibly in the Nestorian offshoot, and may have still been Christian when he composed his works, despite the very strong influence of Islam on them. However, based on an analysis of his writings, a modern historian has challenged this notion, claiming that only a Muslim could have produced such texts.