Ibn Abi Usaybi'a

Muwaffaq al-Din Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn al-Qasim, famous as Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, was born in Damascus into an eminent family of physicians. He studied medicine and botany at the Nuri Hospital in Damascus alongside Ibn al-Nafis, and practiced clinical medicine and ophthalmology at the Nasiri Hospital in Cairo before serving as chief physician in southern Syria.

Ibn Abi Usaybi'a's immortal contribution to science is Uyun al-Anba fi Tabaqat al-Atibba (Sources of Information on the Classes of Physicians), an exhaustive biographical encyclopedia containing four hundred and thirty-eight biographies of Greek, Roman, Indian, Syriac, Persian, and Arab medical doctors and scientists, preserving the history of ancient and medieval clinical discovery.