How Doctors and Texts Did Circulate between the Arabic and Byzantine Worlds?
Résumé
We will try to explore the most significant examples provided by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah and Ibn al-Qifṭī’s books, some of which deal with teaching, others with research, showing active discussions between physicians, regardless of religion. The passages where great collectors of Greek books in the Arabic world are mentioned will be of interest, especially those that give account of the voyages of the doctors between the Arabic world and Byzantium, in one or the other way. These study travels allowed the doctors to work together and to check in books technical notions about treatments, plants and drugs, but also to adduce in their own books sayings of later authors, differences of interpretation, instances of errors and the like.