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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2007
Sa‘d b. Mansūr Ibn Kammūna, a Jewish polymath whose writings are now receiving a good deal of scholarly attention, worked in Baghdad under the aegis of the Mongol rulers and their courtiers. Born early in the thirteenth century, so it seems, he was forced to flee the capital after rioters protested against his book which compared the three revealed monotheistic faiths; he died in the 1280s. His oeuvre includes a treatise on ophthalmology, no longer extant; quotations from it are however available in the writing of another ophthalmologist, Sadaqa ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shādhilī. From these we learn that Ibn Kammūna practiced medicine in Aleppo (Halab).
I acknowledge with gratitude the very helpful criticisms of Charles Manekin and Tony Street on issues of logic and Emilie Savage-Smith with regard to medicine. Leigh Chipman, A.I. Sabra, and Hossein Ziai were also kind enough to answer queries. Hermann Landolt offered some important criticisms to the final draft of this paper. Responsibility for the contents of this study rests with the author alone. This research was supported by a grant from the German-Israel Foundation for Scientific Research and Development.
