Sharaf al-Zaman al-Marwazi

Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir al-Marwazī or Marvazī (Arabic: شرف الزمان طاهر المروزي; fl. 1056/57–1124/25 CE) was a physician and author of Nature of Animals (كتاب طبائع الحيوان البحري والبري Kitāb Ṭabāʾiʿ al-Ḥayawān al-Baḥrī wa-al-Barrī).

He was a native of Merv,[1] part of the Khorasan region in modern-day Turkmenistan.

Nature of Animals

Al-Marwazī drew upon the works of Aristotle, Dioscorides, Galen, Oribasius, Timotheos of Gaza, Paul of Aegina, and the Muslim scholar Al-Jahiz. The work comprises five parts:[2]

  • On human beings
  • On domestic and wild quadrupeds
  • On land and marine birds
  • On venomous creatures
  • On marine animals

Physician

Al-Marwazi served as physician at the courts of the Seljuk Sultan Malik-Shah I and his successors.[3] As a physician, he recorded observations of parasitic worms.[2]

References

  1. ^ Minorsky, V. (1942). Sharaf Al-Zaman Tahir Marvazi. London: The Royal Asiatic Society. p. 2.
  2. ^ a b Egerton, Frank N. (2012). Roots of Ecology: Antiquity to Haeckel. University of California Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0520953635.
  3. ^ Hopkins, J. F. P. (2000). Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history. Princeton, N.J: Markus Wiener Publishers. p. 24. ISBN 1558762418.

Bibliography