Death of Ibn al-Nafis

# Death of Ibn al-Nafis

Ala ad-Din Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Abi al-Hazm al-Qarshi al-Dimashqi, known as Ibn al-Nafis (607-687 AH / 1213-1288 CE), was the physician who discovered pulmonary circulation — the circulation of blood through the lungs — more than three centuries before William Harvey's discovery of the full circulatory system is credited in European medical history. His work represents one of the most significant contributions to medicine from the Islamic world.

Life

Ibn al-Nafis was born in Damascus in 607 AH (1213 CE). He studied medicine under the renowned physician Muhadhdhab ad-Din al-Dakhwar in Damascus before moving to Cairo, where he spent most of his career. He served as chief physician at the Nasiri Hospital in Cairo and eventually as personal physician to the Mamluk Sultan Baybars I. He died in Cairo in 687 AH (1288 CE), reportedly donating his house and library to the Mansuri Hospital.

The Discovery of Pulmonary Circulation

In his commentary on Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb), written around 630 AH (1242 CE), Ibn al-Nafis contradicted Galen's theory of blood passage. Galen, whose works had dominated medieval medicine, held that blood passed from the right side of the heart to the left through invisible pores in the septum (the wall dividing the heart).

Ibn al-Nafis explicitly rejected this, arguing:

1. The cardiac septum is solid with no pores — he had conducted dissections

2. Blood from the right side of the heart must pass through the lungs, where it mixes with air

3. This refined blood then passes to the left side of the heart

This is pulmonary circulation — the correct description of how blood circulates through the lungs to be oxygenated before returning to the heart to be pumped through the rest of the body.

His text states: "The blood, after it is concocted in the right cavity of the heart... must be transmitted to the left cavity where the vital spirit is generated. But there is no passage between these two cavities... the blood must pass through the vena arteriosa to the lung... then from the lung to the vena venosa to reach the left cavity."

This passage remained largely unknown in Europe until the twentieth century, when scholars examining Arabic manuscripts realized that Ibn al-Nafis had preceded Harvey and Servetus by centuries.

Other Medical Works

Ibn al-Nafis wrote extensively on medicine, ophthalmology, and philosophy. His al-Shamil fi al-Tibb (Comprehensive Work on Medicine) was planned as an encyclopedia greater than Ibn Sina's Canon, reportedly comprising 300 volumes, of which about 80 survive in manuscript.

His Kitab al-Mujaz (The Concise Book) was a shorter medical summary that became a standard text in later Islamic medical education.

He also wrote a remarkable philosophical novella, Risalat Fadil ibn Natiq (Theologus Autodidactus), about a person raised alone on a desert island who arrives at theological truth through reason — a work of Islamic philosophical fiction that has been compared to Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan.

Legacy

Ibn al-Nafis's discovery of pulmonary circulation was rediscovered by European scholars only in the sixteenth century — by Michael Servetus (1553 CE) and Realdo Colombo (1559 CE). The debate about whether these European scholars had access to Ibn al-Nafis's work continues among historians of science. Ibn al-Nafis's Arabic text was first brought to the attention of modern scholars by the Egyptian physician Muhyi al-Din al-Tatawi in 1924, who found the relevant passage while writing his doctoral thesis in Germany.

Sources

• Ibn al-Nafis, Sharh Tashrih al-Qanun (Commentary on the Anatomy of the Canon)
• Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, Uyun al-Anba fi Tabaqat al-Atibba
• al-Safadi, al-Wafi bil-Wafayat
• Emilie Savage-Smith, "Ibn al-Nafis," Encyclopedia of the History of Science