Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi

Who was Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi?

Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi, also known in the West as Albucasis, was an Arab Muslim physician who lived in Al-Andalus. He is considered the greatest medieval surgeon to have appeared from the Islamic World, and has been described by many as the father of modern surgery. His greatest contribution to medicine is the Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices. His pioneering contributions to the field of surgical procedures and instruments had an enormous impact in the East and West well into the modern period, where some of his discoveries are still applied in medicine to this day.

He was the first physician to describe an ectopic pregnancy, and the first physician to identify the hereditary nature of haemophilia.