Ibn Buṭlān, a Physician on the Move between the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds
Joe Glynias
Medieval Worlds 23 (2025), 115-138.
Abstract:
In this paper, I introduce a novel perspective on the Baghdadi physician
Ibn Buṭlān, analyzing how he flexibly deployed his Christian identity,
his Baghdadi medical education and connections, and his knowledge of the
Greek and Arabic traditions to gain employment and fame as he traveled
across both the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. Ibn Buṭlān is known to
scholars of medieval Arabic medicine and literature as an exemplary
Arabic litterateur of the Islamicate world. However, his actions and
career as a Christian Arabic author – including his authorship of a
treatise on the Eucharist for the Byzantine patriarch in the midst of
East-West schism in Constantinople in 1054 – are much less well
understood. In this paper, I show how Ibn Buṭlān marketed his Baghdadi
intellectual heritage as he traveled across the Islamic world.
Furthermore, I show that he converted to join the Byzantine church and
became a Byzantine monk. This enabled him to join other Arabic-speaking
Christian scholars active under Byzantine rule in the city of Antioch,
and to market his Baghdadi heritage to new Byzantine audiences, both
Arabic- and Greek-speaking. I argue that, by composing Arabic texts and
instructing students in Antioch, he helped instigate a wider,
long-lasting Byzantine interest in the Greco-Arabic medicine of Baghdad.
Download the article free in open access here.
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