al-Ghāfiqī, Muḥammad - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Savage-Smith, Emilie
Leiden
Brill
(955 words)
Muḥammad b. Qassūm b. Aslam al-Ghāfiqī was an oculist in late sixth/twelfth-century Muslim Spain. Nothing is known of his life or education but what can be gleaned from his only composition, Kitāb al-murshid fī ṭibb al-ʿayn ("The guide to ophthalmology"). There is no mention of the author or his treatise in any extant biographical dictionary, including that of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa (d. 668/1270), where the omission is particularly significant, because Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa was himself a practising oculist. In the Murshid , the author refers (