Ibn al-Nafis

ʿ Alā ' ad - Dīn Abū al -Hasan ʿ Alī ibn Abī al - Hazm Quraschī ad Dimaschqī, علاء الدين أبو الحسن علي بن أبى حزم القرشي الدمشقي, DMG ʿ Alā ʾ u d - Dīn Abū l - Ḥasan ʿ Alī b. Ḥazm Abī al - Qurašī ad Dimašqī, known as Ibn al - Nafis / ابن النفيس, in the English-speaking world as Ibn al - Nafis, (* 1210 or 1213 in Damascus, † December 17, 1288 in Cairo ) was a Muslim polymath from Syria.

He studied medicine during his youth in Nuri Hospital in Damascus. Later he was awarded as one of the best students a scholarship for the Nasiri hospital in Cairo, where he later took over the management and personal physician of Sultan Baybars I was.

Its particular merit is the first description of small blood circulation, better known as pulmonary circulation. Its discovery was in fundamental contrast to the humoral theory, which by the works of Galen and Ibn Sina ( Latinized: Avicenna ) was widely known and adopted in part the discovery of blood circulation by the English physician William Harvey in the 17th century anticipated. But contrary to this, Ibn an- Nafis was no empirical evidence based, but arrived at his results on the way of theoretical considerations. This was probably the reason why his theory with Arab mittelalterlichern physicians remained almost completely unnoticed. The supply to the heart through the coronary vessels he realized.

He also commented on the writings of Hippocrates, Hunayn ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sina, wrote books about dieting and eye diseases as well as a novel, which appeared in the West under the translated title Theologus Autodidactus.