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Index / Activities / Conferences and debates / Ibn Yulyul: Al-Andalus physician and pharmacologist in the Umayyad court of Cordoba
Ibn Yulyul: Al-Andalus physician and pharmacologist in the Umayyad court of Cordoba
September 23, 20257:00 p.m.
CORDOBA
Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Samuel de los Santos Gener, 9).
7:00 p.m.
Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.
In Spanish.
After the summer break, on Tuesday, September 23 we will be coming back with our conference series “Semblances of Cordoba: The Umayyad era in the first person,” with this session, in which Prof. Ana Cabo will introduce us to the life of one of the most important physicians from the era of Al-Andalus. Come and listen to her.
Ibn Yulyul (or Ğulğul) is one of the best-known figures in the scientific history of Al-Andalus. His life and work spanned the reigns of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, al-Ḥakam II, Hišām II and al-Manṣūr. His education included the study of religious sciences, language, geometry, arithmetic, medicine and pharmacology. It was the last two of these to which he devoted himself with the greatest commitment and zeal, and it was through these that he became part of the Umayyad caliph’s court, becoming the personal physician of Hišām II and writing his most important works during the reign of Almanzor.
His scientific works were mainly pharmacological in nature and reveal a deep knowledge of botany. Amongst his most outstanding compositions one could mention the Book explaining the names of simple medicines taken from Dioscorides’ book, the Treatise of medicines of the “triaca” or the Generations of doctors and scholars, a bio-bibliographical work dedicated to highlighting the great medical figures in history from its beginnings.
His scientific works were mainly pharmacological in nature and reveal a deep knowledge of botany. Amongst his most outstanding compositions one could mention the Book explaining the names of simple medicines taken from Dioscorides’ book, the Treatise of medicines of the “triaca” or the Generations of doctors and scholars, a bio-bibliographical work dedicated to highlighting the great medical figures in history from its beginnings.
Ana María Cabo González is a professor in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Seville. She holds a degree in Semitic-Arabic-Islamic Philology from the University of Granada and a PhD in Arabic Philology from the University of Seville. She has taught at the universities of La Laguna, Cádiz, and Seville, and her research work has a notably philological profile: the editing, translation, and study of medieval Arabic manuscripts on medical and pharmacological topics. She currently coordinates the Master’s Degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language and Other Modern Languages at the University of Seville and directs the Al-Andalus-Maghreb Journal at the University of Cádiz.
She has organized a number of research conferences and meetings, including the “International Conference on the Editing and Translation of Ancient and Medieval Texts,” held annually from 2019 to 2023.
Amongst her most notable works are those dedicated to the editing and translation of theTreatise on Wine by al-Rāzī, the Book on Coitus by al-Baṣrī, the Collection of Medicines and Foods by Ibn al-Bayṭār, the anonymous Treatise on Hair and the Dissertation on Thirst and El Kitāb al-Taŷribatayn by Ibn Bāŷŷa and Sufyān al-Andalusī. Reconstruction of the work through quotations by Ibn al-Bayṭār in his Kitāb al-Ŷāmi’.
