David ben Solomon
DAVID BEN SOLOMON
DAVID BEN SOLOMON (Ab? al-Fa?l D? ??d ibn Ab? al-Bay?n Suleim?n al-Isr? ??l? ; 1161–after 1236), Karaite physician in Cairo. He was a pupil of and secretary to ?ibat All?h ibn Jumay? (or Jam??), a Jewish convert to Islam, and personal physician to the sultan Saladin. David served as physician to the sultan al-Malik al-?Adil. He also served on the medical faculty of the N??ir? hospital in Cairo. Here he had among his students Ibn Ab? U?aybi?a, the author of the classical history of Arab physicians, who speaks of him in the highest terms as an outstanding diagnostician and the rapeutist. David wrote Al-Dust?r al-B?m?rist?n? f? al-Adwiya al-Murakkaba (ed. by P. Sbath, Cairo, 1933), a formulary of compound medicines for hospital use, and Ris?lat al-Mujarrab?t, a tract on well-tested medicines. Prescriptions by David are frequently quoted in the standard pharmacopoeia (entitled Minh?j al-Dukk?n) of the 13th-century Jewish apothecary Ab? al-Min? al-K?h?n al-?A???r.
bibliography:
Steinschneider, Arab Lit, 195f.; Brockelmann, Arab Lit, 1 (1898), 491, and Supplement 1 (1937), 896.
[Leon Nemoy]