Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes) (c. 865-925) Abu
Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi, known in the West as Rhazes,
was the leading scholar of the early Islamic world. His stature
is comparable only to that of Ibn Sina a century later.
Influenced by Hippocrates and classical Greek medicine, Al Razi
wrote numerous books on a range of medical and scientific
subjects. The Al-Mansuri and Al-Hawi, his encyclopedic reviews
of medicine, were translated into several languages and became a
standard text for Islamic and European medical students for
centuries. He was a keen experimenter and observer. As director
of a large hospital in Baghdad and physician to the royal court,
he engaged in medicine on a practical level and these
experiences permeate his writings. He saw the importance of
recording a patient’s case history and made clinical notes about
the progress and symptoms of different illnesses, including his
own. One of his most innovative assertions related to measles
and smallpox. Previously they