Ibn al-Nafis
Damascene physician and Shafi'i jurist who gave the first known description of the pulmonary circulation of the blood
The Damascene physician who described the lesser circulation of the blood four centuries before Harvey.
Ala al-Din Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Abi al-Hazm al-Qurashi al-Dimashqi, known as Ibn al-Nafis, was born in Damascus around 1210–1213 CE. He studied medicine at the Nuri Hospital (Bimaristan al-Nuri) in Damascus under the physician Muhadhdhab al-Din al-Dakhwar, and also studied Shafi'i jurisprudence, hadith and Arabic language.
He moved to Cairo around 1236 CE, where he worked at the Nasiri Hospital and later became chief physician at the Mansuri Hospital; he was also among the physicians of Sultan al-Zahir Baybars.
In his "Commentary on the Anatomy of Ibn Sina's Canon" (Sharh Tashrih al-Qanun), he refuted Galen's view that blood seeps from the right to the left ventricle through pores in the septum, showing that the septum is solid and has no pores, and that blood must instead travel from the right ventricle through the lungs and back to the heart — the first known description of the pulmonary (lesser) circulation, three centuries before European physicians rediscovered it. His text remained unknown in the West until the Egyptian physician Muhyi al-Din al-Tatawi found his manuscript in Berlin in 1924.
Among his other works is "Al-Risala al-Kamiliyya" (known in Latin as Theologus Autodidactus), a philosophical tale of a child who grows up alone on an island and discovers truth through his own reason — counted among the earliest philosophical novels in Arabic literature.
Ibn al-Nafis died in Cairo in December 1288 CE, bequeathing his house and library to the Mansuri Hospital.
