Introduction

Muwaffaq al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baghdādī was a man of great learning who became well known for his expertise in many fields: grammar, lexicography, law, natural sciences, alchemy, philosophy, and, most notably, medicine. He was born in Baghdad in 1162 and died there in 1231 after an absence of forty-five years during which he traveled widely in the Islamic world. He had a succession of patrons and came into contact with a number of prominent military leaders, scholars, philosophers, and physicians, including Saladin, Maimonides, ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī (Saladin's personal secretary and a fellow autobiographer), and Ibn Sanā’ al-Mulk.^[1]

The sīra, or life narrative, of ‘Abd al-Laṭīf seems to have formed part of a larger work, no longer extant, entitled simply ta’rīkh (history or diary), which he wrote for his son.^[2] Although it does not seem to have survived in toto, the sīra was used by Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a (d. 1270) in compiling his biographical dictionary of physicians. Similar to the autobiography of Ibn al- ‘Adīm as recorded by Yāqūt, the autobiography of ‘Abd al-Laṭīf survives as a composite of first-person extracts from his original text, interwoven with paraphrases and additional firsthand knowledge supplied by Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a, for ‘Abd al-Laṭīf was a close friend of his grandfather and a teacher of both his father and paternal uncle. In spite of conforming somewhat to the standard curriculum vitae model, it is clear from these fragments and those preserved in other works that ‘Abd al-Laṭīf's sīra was replete with insights and judgments about the places he lived and visited, the people he encountered, and the intellectual currents of his day. He notes, for example, that many of the best scholars of his era, including himself, were unduly preoccupied with alchemy (which he finally denounces toward the end of his autobiography); that were it not for the ineptitude of the attending physician, Saladin's death might have been averted; and that Maimonides, though extremely knowledgeable, was misguided and overly concerned about currying favor with his “worldly lords.”

‘Abd al-Laṭīf is a towering figure in the intellectual and scientific history of the Islamic Middle Ages. His autobiography, besides providing glimpses into the ingredients that make a scholar, is a record of the triumph of knowledge and learning even in times of turmoil, upheaval, and shifting alliances. The translation below contains most of the first-person passages preserved in the entry on ‘Abd al-Laṭīf in Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a's compendium.