Biography
Abū Al-Qāsim was born in the city of El-Zahra, six miles northwest of Córdoba, Andalusia. The nisba (attributive title), Al-Ansari, suggests origin from the Medinian tribe of Al-Ansar.
He lived most of his life in Córdoba. It is also where he studied, taught and practiced medicine and surgery until shortly before his death in about 1013, two years after the sacking of El-Zahra.
Few details remain regarding his life, aside from his published work, due to the destruction of El-Zahra during later Castillian-Andalusian conflicts. His name first appears in the writings of Abu Muhammad bin Hazm (993 – 1064), who listed him among the greatest physicians of Moorish Spain. But we have the first detailed biography of al-Zahrawī from al-Ḥumaydī's Jadhwat al-Muqtabis (On Andalusian Savants), completed six decades after al-Zahrawī's death.
He was a contemporary of Andalusian chemists such as Ibn al-Wafid, Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti and Artephius.
Read more about this topic: Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi
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