Rostam Gorgani

Who is Rostam Gorgani?

Rostam Gorgani was a mid-16th century Persian physician who lived in India.

Rostam Gorgani was the court physician of two of the rulers of the Deccan sultanates, Malik Ahmad Shah I and Burhan Shah I, in the city of Ahmadnagar in the Deccan Plateau, India. His name indicates he was from Gorgan, Golestan, Iran.

He composed several medical treatises in Persian, the most extensive being the Zakhirai-Nizamshahi, his encyclopaedia of material medica which he compiled at the request of Sultan Nizam-Shah and named after him. Only two copies survive, one at the Manuscript Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, and the other at the National Library of Medicine of the United States.