43 Facts About Ibn Butlan

Ibn Butlan was educated about practical medical procedures in line with a new experimentation-based medical learning approach proposed by Persian physician Abu Bakr al-Razi.

Ibn Butlan studied in the al-Karh district of Baghdad, in which many Christians lived and received an ecclesial education from his teacher, who is considered the most important exegete of Christian Arabic literature.

However Ibn Butlan at-Taiyib taught him about the writers of Greek literary classics, such as Homer.

Ibn Butlan showed great interest in Arabic poetry and pursued an education therein.

Ibn Butlan's travels began with a 10-month-long journey to al-Fustat, an hour's walk south from the newly established Fatimid capital of Cairo.

Ibn Butlan describes it as being very large in size, yet smaller than the Caliph's palace in Baghdad.

Ibn Butlan described the outsides of the basilica located within the castle as being covered in golden mosaics, the basilica as having been built on a cistern in the ground as large as the above ground building itself.

Ibn Butlan writes about the inhabitants of the castle, who were Christian bedouins earning their keep by guarding caravans and trading goods.

Ibn Butlan remained in Aleppo for a longer period of time.

Ibn Butlan warns of greedy medical quacks offering to cure him.

Ibn Butlan left Baghdad destitute and most certainly would not have travelled with dependants, and he was not long enough in Aleppo to be born a son there.

Ibn Butlan would go on to condemn Monophysite beliefs in his work The Physicians' Banquet, a possible reason for the Aleppine Armenian community's staunch dislike for him long after his stay.

Ibn Sarara possessed no knowledge of this subject, while ibn Butlan was very well educated therein.

Ibn Butlan consequently began to vilify ibn Butlan and instigated further agitation against him in the already oppositional Aleppine Christian community.

Ibn Butlan gained favour with rulers of many backgrounds and travelled across borders with no recorded difficulties doing so.

Ibn Butlan described Antioch in great detail and spoke favourably of the city.

Near Antioch Ibn Butlan visited the Monastery of Symeon the Younger, the size and fortune of which impressed him greatly.

Ibn Butlan commented on the ringing of the bells by Christians to interrupt the city's muezzin's adan, Conrad interprets his description to be disapproving of this behaviour by the Christian community.

Ibn Butlan uses morally condemning and highly disapproving language when describing this process.

Conrad and Kennedy both claim Ibn Butlan was warmly received at the court and praised by its chief physician, Ibn Ridwan.

Ibn Butlan had been writing missives to Hilal as-Sabi of Baghdad throughout his travels, these spanned a wide range of topics such as medicine and geography.

Conrad suggests, based on his allegorical reading of the Physicians' Banquet that Ibn Ridwan continued being of some help to Ibn Butlan, introducing him to prominent medical practitioners of the city.

Ibn Butlan Ridwan was the son of poor baker from Giza, his parents died young he therefore had no inheritance to fund his studies with, thus he became a roadside fortuneteller to fund his education.

Ibn Butlan had his break when he was able to substitute for a friend of his who worked as a physician and began to pursue medicine with much determination; he ended up gaining a position as the chief physician of the court, being the successor to Nastas ibn Guraig, in addition to amassing a large number of students, a large personal medical library in an addition to a monetary fortune stemming from his real estate investments in the city.

Ibn Butlan therefore guarded his position in manner which was perceived as aggressive and polemicising.

Ibn Butlan worked against the perception of having been, what the medical community of that time considered, a charlatan prior to a physician.

Ibn Butlan attacked many of his colleagues with barrages of personal insults without having interacted much with them prior.

Ibn Butlan did not know that al-Yabrudi, the man whose reasoning and knowledge of the ancients was described as insufficient and unconvincing by the essay, had been a personal friend of Ibn Ridwan.

Ibn Butlan responded reciprocally with another essay to Ibn Ridwan's response which he called the Egyptian Essay.

Ibn Butlan explain this with instructor and student being homogenous in their natures making transmission of knowledge easy.

Some scholars claim that Ibn Butlan would give his view of events though long after having left Egypt in a satirical work they identify as quasi-autobiographical, The Physicians' Banquet.

Ibn Butlan dedicated the work to the Marwanid Emir Nasr ad-Daula Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn Marwan the ruler of Maiyafariqin in the province of Diyar Bakr.

Ibn Butlan sees that Ibn Butlan's approach in his essay, which seems to focus on reconciliation between the two conflicting sides, echoes the position of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Peter III of Antioch.

Graf argues that Ibn Butlan's treatise is not original, but rather an echo of Greek polemics particularly those of Peter III of Antioch and of Cerularius himself.

Ibn Butlan believed the event to be connected to a low water level of the Nile and a consequent famine decimating much of Egypt, as well as multiple devastating epidemics throughout Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Iraq, Persia, and the Yemen.

Ibn Butlan was not a professional astronomer nor an astrologer, rather he was a physician operating according to the tradition of Galen and Hippocrates both of whom believed in a connection between cosmic and telluric events, illness and natural catastrophes.

Hence Ibn Butlan observed the stars with the intent of gaining knowledge of medical importance like many of his contemporary physicians.

Ibn Butlan journeyed from Egypt to Constantinople where he remained for a year.

Ibn Butlan was a member of an Eastern Christian Baghdadi family that provided three generations worth of prominent physician-philosophers.

Ibn Butlan's commentary is solely concerned with addressing the questions which are posed by the young physician but not answered in the original work.

Klein-Franke, Dagher, and Troupeau claim Ibn Butlan himself did not incorporate any thought from Ibn Sina into his work, as he likely did not have any knowledge of him and view this commentary as the first point of contact between their respective works.

Ibn Butlan is variously known by the names Elbochasim de baldach, Elbocasim de baldach, Albulkasem de Baldac, Ububchasym de Baldach, Eluchasem Elimitar, and Albullasem de baldak in medieval Latin texts and Europe at large.

Conrad suggests that Ibn Butlan likely did not even himself know when he was born.