Ibn al-Quff

Abu al-Faraj ibn Ya'qub ibn Ishaq, known as Ibn al-Quff al-Karaki and titled Amin al-Dawla ("Trustee of the State"), was an Arab physician and surgeon active in the Levant under early Mamluk rule. He is consistently described in the sources as a Melkite Christian (a member of the Eastern Christian community in communion with the Byzantine church), and so he belonged to no Islamic school; the site lists his sect as "not applicable." He worked, however, entirely within the Arabic medical tradition.

He was born in al-Karak, a fortress town east of the Jordan, on 22 August 1233 (in the year AH 630). His father, a government scribe, moved the family to Sarkhad (Salkhad) in southern Syria, where the historian-physician Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, author of the famous biographical dictionary of doctors, taught the young Ibn al-Quff medicine. He continued his studies in Damascus across medicine, philosophy, the natural sciences and mathematics.

Ibn al-Quff served for some years as an army physician-surgeon, by several accounts at the citadel of Ajlun, then returned to Damascus, where he taught and practised until his death in 1286 (AH 685) at the age of fifty-two. His best-known book, Kitab al-Umda fi al-jiraha ("The Mainstay, on Surgery"), is reckoned the largest medieval Arabic treatise written specifically for surgeons; it discusses anatomy, wounds and surgical care, and includes an early account of the fine vessels later understood as capillaries.