Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib

Serving as Grand Vizier to Sultan Muhammad V of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib was the intellectual titan of 14th-century western Islam. In his medical treatise Muqni'at al-Sa'il 'an al-Marad al-Ha'il during the 1348 Black Death, he made the revolutionary empirical observation that disease spreads through microscopic contagion and physical contact.

His poems remain etched in stucco upon the walls of the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra. Seeking political asylum in Marinid Morocco, he settled in Fez alongside his close friend Ibn Khaldun, where he was tragically murdered by court conspirators in 1374, buried outside Bab al-Mahrouk.