LITERATURE OF THE ARABS. 95 



tendent of the College of Bagdad. Serapion, Alk- 

 hendi, Thibet ibn Korra the friend and astrologer 

 of the Caliph Motaded, Baktishua and his son Ga- 

 briel., with a host of others, are names which adorn 

 the medical annals of the Saracens. The lives of 

 more than 300 Mohammedan physicians, consist- 

 ing of Arabs, Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians, 

 were recorded by an author named Osaiba, part of 

 whose work, about a century ago, Dr Mead, at his 

 own expense, caused to be translated from the ori- 

 ginal ; but it proved so incoherent and so full of 

 puerile stories, that the task was abandoned. To 

 Ali ibn Al Abbas, surnamed the Magian from the 

 sect to which he belonged, we are indebted for the 

 earliest as well as the best account of Arabian phy- 

 sic. This eminent author was a star of the first mag- 

 nitude in the galaxy of learned men who flourished 

 at the court of Adodowlah, sultan of Aleppo. His 

 book, called Al Meleki or Royal Work, which ap- 

 peared about the year 980, was intended to be a com- 

 plete system of medicine, and continued to main- 

 tain its ascendency till superseded by the Canon of 

 Avicenna. 



Al Razi, or Rhazes as he is commonly desig- 

 nated, is a name of which Arabian literature has 

 reason to be proud. He flourished in the tenth cen- 

 tury, and had the reputation of being deeply skilled 

 in almost all sciences as well as in medicine. He 

 was appointed director of the hospital at Rhe, in 

 Irak, his native city, and afterwards delivered lec- 

 tures in the College of Bagdad, in which he was by 

 far the most distinguished professor of his time. 

 His fame rests chiefly on his medical writings, the 

 principal of which, Alhcovi or the Continent, com- 



