Al-Jurjani

Zayn al-Din Sayyed Isma‘il ibn al-Husayn al-Jorjani, also spelled al-Jurjani and Gorgani, was a 12th century royal Islamic physician from Gorgan, Iran.

Jurjani was a pupil of Ibn Abi Sadiq and Ahmad ibn Farrokh. He arrived at the court in the Persian province of Khwarazm in the year 1110 when he was already a septuagenarian. There he became a court physician to the governor of the province, Khwarazm-Shah Qutb al-Din Muhammad I ibn Nushtikin, who ruled from 1097 to 1127. It was to him that he dedicated his most comprehensive and influential work, the Persian-language compendium "Zakhirah-i Khvarazm'Shahi".

Jurjani continued as court physcian to Khwarazm'Shah Qutb al-Din's son and successor, ‘Ala al-Ddowleh Atsoz, until at some unspecified time he moved to the city of Merv, the capital of the rival Seljuq Sultan Sanjar ibn Malikshah (ruled 1118-1157), where he died nearly at 100 lunar years of age.

Jurjani composed a number of important medical and philosophical treatises, in both Persian and Arabic, most of them written after he moved to Khwarazm at the age of 70 lunar years.

"Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarazm"

Al-Jurjani wrote the Persian medical encyclopedia, "Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarazm" (also known as "The Treasure of Khvarazm Shah"), some time after 1110, when he moved to the northern Persian province of Khwarezm. Much of his work was dependent on Avicenna's "The Canon of Medicine" (c. 1025), along with al-Jurjani's own ideas not found in the "Canon". The work is composed of ten volumes covering ten medical fields: anatomy, physiology, hygiene, diagnosis and prognosis, fevers, diseases particular to a part of the body, surgery, skin diseases, poisons and antidotes, and medicaments (both simple and compound). In endocrinology in particular, al-Jurjani was one of "the first to associate exophthalmos with goitre," which not repeated until Calb Pary (1755-1822) in 1825, and later by Robert Graves (1795-1853) and Carl von Basedow (1799-1854). Al-Jurjani also established an association between goitre and palpitation in the "The Treasure of Khvarazm Shah". [citation|journal=International Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism|year=2003|volume=1|pages=43-45 [45] |title=Clinical Endocrinology in the Islamic Civilization in Iran|last=Nabipour|first=I.]

J. G. Ljunggren (1983) suggests that al-Jurjani should be credited with recognizing Graves-Basedow disease, having noted the association of goitre and exophthalmos, in his "Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarazm", the most famous of his five books, and the major medical dictionary of its time. [citation|journal=Lakartidningen|year=1983|date=August 10, 1983|volume=80|issue=32-33|page=2902|title=Who was the man behind the syndrome: Ismail al-Jurjani, Testa, Flagani, Parry, Graves or Basedow? Use the term hyperthyreosis instead|last=Ljunggren|first=J. G.] WhoNamedIt|synd|1517|Basedow's syndrome or disease - the history and naming of the disease]

References

ources

* B. Thierry de Crussol des Epesse, Discours sur l'oeil d'Esma`il Gorgani (Teheran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1998), pp. 7-13.
* Lutz Richter-Bernburg, Persian Medical Manuscripts at the University of California, Los Angeles: A Descriptive Catalogue, Humana Civilitas, vol. 4 (Malibu: Udena Publications, 1978). pp. 208
* C.A. Storey, Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey. Volume II, Part 2: E.Medicine (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1971), pp 207-211 no. 361
* The article "Djurdjani" by J. Schacht in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, ed. by H.A.R. Gibbs, B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat, C. Bosworth et al., 11 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960-2002) (2nd ed.), vol. 2, p. 603
* The article "Dakira-ye Kvarazmshahi" by `Ali-Akbar Sa`idi Sirjani in Encyclopedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, 6+ vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1983 to present), vol. 6 (1999) pp. 609-610.
* Shoja MM, Tubbs RS. The history of anatomy in Persia. J Anat 2007; 210:359–378.

ee also

* List of Iranian scientists