Jewish Doctors according to Three Major Medieval Arabic Literary Sources

Scholarship on Jewish doctors of the medieval Islamic period often attempts to reconstruct the lives of these physicians by mining medieval Arabic biographies for historical information. However, this method overlooks the fact that these compilations are literary works that were constructed by their elite, Muslim authors to fit certain literary and occupational tropes. The three major medieval Arabic-language compilations are composed by Sa'id al-Andalusi, a learned judge from Toledo who died in 1070 C.E., Ibn al-Qifti (d. 1248 C.E.), an Egyptian historian, and Ibn Abi Usaybi'a (d. 1270 C.E.), who was a physician himself in Damascus. The format and selection of biographical entries on Jewish doctors depended heavily on the Muslim compiler's own geographical residence, personal acquaintance, and relation to the medical profession; the problematic nature of this selection process thus presents a skewed image of the proliferation of Jewish doctors and their medical specializations in the 12th and 13th centuries C.E. At the same time, however, the biases of the Muslim compilers tell us a great deal about their interaction with Jewish doctors, the context of the hospital and ruling court, and the intricate physician networks through which Muslims and Jews taught each other. Furthermore, these works present Islamic perspectives on the major Jewish figures of the time that are markedly different from those evident in Jewish sources but can only be fully discerned when understood within the context of the Arabic biographical genre.