[Medical historiography in the Islamic Middle Ages]

The model for the Islamic historiography is the lost original text of the history of physicians by John the Grammarian (Grammatikós). Ishâq ibn Hunain, the son of the famous Hunain ("Johannitius" in Latin) wrote the first history of physicians in Arabic. In the year 987 A.D. two scientists completed their works at the same time (independently of another): Ibn an-Nadîm, a Bagdad bookseller, compiled a booklist, and Ibn Juljul, a physician in Cordova, wrote a history of scholars. The main sources for the student of medical history today are the physicians' biographies of the oculist Ibn abî Usaibica which bear the title "Sources of the news about the generations of physicians" which are printed in Arabic only. He was a physician at the hospital in Damascus and Cairo and a friend of many fellow-physicians; therefore his large number of biographical informations about life in hospital and in medical study are particularly valuable.