Science at work: who does what, and who contributed

This lesson asks you to describe how science and technology are used in different jobs and how that work meets real needs, and to analyse what different communities have contributed to science and technology. The museum offers a hospital in Egypt, a physician-scholar and a hospital in Baghdad built on an earlier model. Other jobs, skilled trades and other communities are for your class to bring. ¹

Pick a workplace and list the jobs in it. For each job, ask which problem the person solves and which science or technology they use. Compare your lists.

The expectation asks you to analyse contributions. Think about what evidence tells you who did what, and where an idea or a model came from before it reached the place you are studying.

The historian al-Maqrizi quotes an old biography about Ibn Tulun's hospital in the Fustat area, and it follows a sick person from the door to the way home ². The patient's clothes were removed and kept, with their money, by the hospital custodian ². The patient received clothing and bedding ². Medicines, food and physicians attended the patient morning and evening until recovery ². When the patient could eat a chicken and a loaf, discharge was ordered and money and clothes returned ². Al-Maqrizi names the physicians, the custodian and the attendants only by their jobs ².

If nobody did one of these jobs, which would a sick person miss most: the custodian's, the physician's or the attendant's, and why?

• Ibn Tulun's hospital: the whole account, including the properties that Ibn Tulun gave to support it.
• Harun al-Rashid's hospital in Baghdad: a hospital built on the model of an older one at Jundishapur.
• Ibn al-Nafis: a physician in Egypt who left his books to a hospital.

Read about Harun al-Rashid's Baghdad hospital. Make a table of the people it names and what each one did.