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Birth of the scholar 'Ala' al-Din Ibn al-Nafis at Damascus, c. 607/1210

مولد العلامة علاء الدين ابن النفيس بدمشق، نحو ٦٠٧هـ

c. 1210 CE · c. 607 AH

Damascus

'Ala' al-Din Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Abi al-Hazm al-Qurashi al-Dimashqi, known as Ibn al-Nafis, was born at Damascus — al-A'lam: 'his origin was the village of Qurash (in Transoxiana) and he was born in Damascus' 1. He died in 687 AH aged about eighty — the Shadharat margin notes 'he was eighty-four' 2 3 — placing his birth about 603–607 AH, and the Encyclopaedia makes him 'about 80 (lunar) years' old at death 4.

Depth

At a glance

Era
The Mongol and Post-Mongol Era
Region
Levant & Iraq

In time

120012101220 c.
The Crusades, Ayyubids and Mamluks · The Mongol and Post-Mongol Era

In space

Damascus

Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph

Summary

The scholar 'Ala' al-Din Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Abi al-Hazm al-Qurashi al-Dimashqi, known as Ibn al-Nafis, was born at Damascus about 607/1210; al-A'lam records: "his origin was the village of Qurash (in Transoxiana) and he was born in Damascus" 1.

The year of birth

No birth date survives, but he died in 687 AH aged about eighty — the Shadharat margin notes "he was eighty-four" — placing the birth about 603–607 AH 2 3 4.

Connections

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Had participant
Ibn al-Nafis
Occurred at
Damascus

People and things also explored

Ibn al-Nafis studies medicine under Muhadhdhib al-Din al-Dakhwar at Damascus, before 628/1230· Muhadhdhib al-Din al-Dakhwar, shaykh of medicine· Ibn al-Nafis· Damascus· the Cave of Qasyun (Jibril's Cave)· Qasr Hiraql / Qasr Shams al-Muluk· The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus· Gold-leaf glass mosaic tesserae (Umayyad)

Sources

  1. al-Alam — al-Zirikli , vol. 5 p. 78
  2. Shadharat al-Dhahab — Ibn al-Imad al-Hanbali , p. 401-402
  3. Tarikh al-Islam wa-Wafayat al-Mashahir wa-l-A'lam — al-Dhahabi , s.a. 687 p. 312
  4. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes , vol. 3 p. 897
Cite this page

islam.museum contributors. “Birth of the scholar 'Ala' al-Din Ibn al-Nafis at Damascus, c. 607/1210”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/event/birth-ibn-al-nafis-607/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-01.

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Ibn al-Nafis studies medicine under Muhadhdhib al-Din al-Dakhwar at Damascus, before 628/1230

Ibn al-Nafis studied medicine under the shaykh Muhadhdhib al-Din al-Dakhwar, Damascus's shaykh of medicine and endower of the physicians' madrasa in the old goldsmiths' quarter, and he excelled in the craft and in treatment; al-Dakhwar died in 628/1230, so the apprenticeship predates that year. Tariq al-Suwaydan's al-Mubdi'un adds that a health crisis in 629 AH, when he was twenty-two, drove him to medicine, and that he enrolled at the Nuri hospital in Damascus studying under Muhadhdhib al-Din Abd al-Rahim and Imran al-Isra'ili.