2. In Iraq and Persia:
In 750 A.D., Baghdad was built to be the capital of the Abbasid dynasty by the Calip Abu-Gaifar Al- Mansur. In 766 A.D., he assigned the dean of the medical school of Jindi Shapur, Judis Ibn-Babtishu', to be the Court- Physician and to establish hospitals proportionate to the glory and prosperity of Baghdad.

When Harun Al-Rashid followed (786-809 A.D.), he ordered the grandson of Ibn-Bahtishu and his Court-Physician, Jibril, to build a special hospital named Baghdad Hospital. This hospital developed into an important medic center. One of its chiefs was Al-Razi, the eminent Internist.

In 918 A.D., the Caliph Al-Mugtadir built two hospitals in Baghdad. One was on the east side of the city which he named Al-Sayyidah Hospital, after his mother. The other was on the west side which he named, Al- Mugtadiri Hospital, after himself.

Another important hospital was named Al-Adudi Hospital. It was built in 981 A.D. after King Adud Al-Dawlah. It was the most magnificent hospital built in Baghdad before modern time. The Caliph wanted to outdo his predecessors. It was furnished with the best equipment and supplies known at the time. It had interns, residents, and 24 consultants attending its professional activities. Haly Abbas, who wrote the famous book "Liber Regius (Al-Malaki)", was one of the staff. It was destroyed in 1258 when the Mongols, led by Holagu the grandson of Ghingiz Khan, invaded Baghdad.

3. In Egypt:
In 872 A.D., Ahmed Ibn-Tulun built a hospital called Al-Fusta Hospital in the City Al-Fustat which is now in old Cairo. It served the growing Cairo population for six centuries. It was divided into separate wards. On admission, the patients were given special apparel while their clothes, money, and valuables were stored until the time of their discharge.

In 1284 A.D., King Al-Mansur Qalawun built an important hospital named Al-MansuriHospital . The story behind its construction is interesting. King Al-Mansur Qalawun was an officer in the Arabian army fighting the Crusaders. While in the Holy Land, he fell sick and was admitted to Al- Nuri Hospital. On recovery, he vowed that if he ever became the ruler of Egypt, he would build a great hospital in Cairo even more magnificent than Al-Nuri Hospital for, the sick. poor, and rich alike. At the dedication ceremony, he asked for a cup of wine from the pharmacy. After drinking it he declared that by taking that portion as a medication, he was signifying that the hospital was serving all people. from the king to the least of his subjects (Hamarneh 1962).

It was the best hospital built then as reported by the contemporary historians such as Ibn-Battota and El-Kalkashandi. It had different sections for different diseases. Music therapy was used as a line of treatment for psychiatric patients. It served 4,000 patients daily. The patient's stay in the hospital was free moreover on his discharge, the patient was given food and money for compensation for being out of work during his hospital stay. Al-Mansuri Hospital has served Cairo for seven centuries since it has been built. It is now used for ophthalmology and called Mustashfa Qalawun. Its ancient door is preserved in the Islamic Museum of Cairo.

4. In North Africa (Al-Maghrib Al-Arabi):
a.Tunisia: In 830 A.D., Prince Ziyadat Allah I, built Al-Qayrawan Hospital in a district of the Qayrawan city called Al-Dimnah. Subsequently all hospitals in Tunisia were called Dimnah instead of Bimaristan as they were called in the East, which is a Persian word meaning a hospital. The Qayrawan Hospital was characterized by spacious separate wards waiting rooms for visitors and patients, and female nurses from Sudan, an event representing the first use of nursing in Arabic history. The hospital also included a chapel for prayers.

b. Morocco: In 1190 A.D., the king Al-Mansur Ya'qub Ibn-Yusuf, built a hospital in the capital city, Marakesh, named it the Marakesh Hospital. It was a huge hospital beautifully landscaped with fruit trees and flowers. Water was brought by aqueducts to all sections. Patients were provided with special apparel: one for winter and another for summer. The pharmacy was taken care of by specialists called the Sayadlah. There was an expensive private section where a patient was charged what is equivalent to $ 1501 day. One thousand years ago, this fee was quite expensive.

5. Al-Andalus (Spain):
In 1366 A.D., Prince Muhammed Ibn-Yusuf Ibn Nasr, built the Granada Hospital in the city of Granada which had expanded to half a million population. The hospital represented the beauty of the Arabic architecture in Spain and served the people until the fall of Granada in 1492 A.D.

The patients were treated through a scheme starting with physiotherapy and diet; if this failed, drugs were used, and at last, surgery would be resorted to. The physiotherapy included exercises and water baths. The Arabs had an elaborate system of dieting and were aware of food deficiencies. Proper nutrition was an important item of treatment.

Drugs were divided into two groups: simple and compound drugs. They were aware of the interaction between drugs; thus, they used simple drugs first. If these failed, compound drugs were used which are made from two or more compounds. If these conservative measures failed, surgery was undertaken.

The medical profession was a well respected specialty and its Ieaders kept it this way by laying down proper ethics. Al-Tabari, the chief physician in 970 A.D., described the Islamic code of ethics as follows (Hamamch 1971, Levy 1967):

I. Personal characters of the physician:
The Physician ought to be modest, virtuous, merciful, and un addicted to liquor. He should wear clean clothes, be dignified, and have well- groomed hair and beard. He should not join the ungodly and scaffers, nor sit at their table. He should select his company to be persons of good reputation. He should be careful of what he says and should not hesitate to ask forgiveness if he has made an error. He should be forgiving and never seek revenge. He should be friendly and peacemaker. He should not make jokes or laugh at the improper time or place.

II. His obligation towards patients:
He should avoid predicting whether a patient will live or die, only God (Allah) knows. He ought not loose his temper when his patient keeps asking questions, but should answer gently and compassionately. He should treat alike the rich and the poor, the master and the servant, the powerful and the powerless, the elite and the illiterate. God will reward him if he helps the needy. The physician should not be late for his rounds or his house calls. He should be punctual and reliable. He should not wrangle about his fees. If the patient is very ill or in an emergency, he should be thankful, no matter how much he is paid. He should not give drugs to a pregnant woman for an abortion unless necessary for the mother's health. If the physician prescribes a drug orally, he should make sure that the patient understands the name correctly, in case he would ask for the wrong drug and get worse instead of better. He should be decent towards women and should not divulge the secrets of his patients.

III. His obligation towards the community:
The physician should speak no evil of reputable men of the community or be critical of any one's religious belief.

IV. His obligations towards his colleagues:
The physician should speak well of his acquaintances and colleagues. He should not honor himself by shaming others. If another physician has been called to treat his patient, the family doctor should not criticize his colleague even if the diagnosis and the recommendations of the latter differ from his own. However, be has the obligation to explain what each point of view may lead to since his duty is to counsel the patient as best as he can. He must warn him that combining different types of therapy may be dangerous because the actions of different drugs may be incompatible and injurious.

V. His obligations towards his assistants:
If his subordinate does wrong, the physician should not rebuke him in front of others, but privately and cordially.

Medicine in Islam passed through three stages:

I. The first stage is the stage of translation of foreign sources into Arabic. It extended mainly during the seventh and eighth centuries.

II. The second stage is the stage of excellence and genuine contribution in which the Islamic physicians were the leaders and the source of new chapters to medicine. This stage extended during the ninth through the thirteenth centuries.

III. The third stage is the stage of decline where medicine, as well as other branches of science, became stagnant and deteriorated. The stage started mainly after the thirteenth century.

During the first stage, Syrian and Persian scholars did a marvelous job by translating honestly the ancient literature from Greek and Syriac in Arabic. Thcy translated different branches of science including philosophy astrology, and medicine. The works of Hippocratcs (460-370 BC), Aristototle (384-322 BC), and Galen (131-210 A.D.) were among those translated From Arabic, the classic Greek literature was translated into Latin, then into Greek because most of the original scripts were lost and the only source was the Arabic translation. If the Arabs did only one thing, namely, preserving the ancient literature and handing it honestly to Europe, that would have been a sufficient contribution in itself. The Moslem rulers encouraged translation, e.g. Khalif Al-Mamun Al-Abbassi paid the translator the weight of his translation in gold (Haddad 1942). Among the eminent physicians who took part in the first stage were Jurjis lbn-Bakhtisliu, his grandson Jibril, Yuhanna Ibn-Masawaya, and Hunain Ibn-Ishak; most of them were Christians, yet they were respected and well treated by the Moslem rulers.

It is said, rightly or wrongly, that the history of a nation is the sum total of the history of a few of its individuals. This is particularly true in the history of medicine during the Arab period. In every stage of its development we find men of outstanding repute, the sum total of whose efforts has constituted this magnificent chapter. It is impossible to give an account of all the important physicians of Islwn. We thus are going to discuss some of those who were known to Medieval Europe and whose books affected its thinking and practice for centuries (Table 1), I chose an internist, Al-Razi (Razes); a surgeon, Al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis); the physician-philosopher of Islam, Ibn-Sina (Avicenna); the philosopher-physician of Islam, Ibn-Rushd (Averroes); a pioneer in physiology, Ibn-Al-Nafis; and a Jewish Arab, Ibn- Maimon (Maimonides).

His full name is Abu-Bakr Mohammaed Ibn-Zakaria Al-Razi, known to the Western World as Razes. He was born in Ray, a suburb of Tehran, the capital of modern Persia (Profile of Iran 1977, Sarton 1950). He first studied music which was his main interest in his early life. He was a skillful player on the lute. He then studied philosophy, and later medicine. But he was a better physician than a philosopher ,

He first became the Court-Physician of Prince Abu Saleh Al-Mansur, the ruler of Khorosan. Then he moved to Baghdad where he became the Chief Physician of the Baghdad Hospital and the Court-Physician of the Caliph. He had a good basis of physics and chemistry as well as medicine.

He published several books which were translated into Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, and Greek. One of his main books is "Al-Mansuri" (Liber Al-Mansofis) which he dedicated to his patron Prince Al-Mansur. It was composed of ten treatises and included all aspects of health and disease. He defined medicine as "the art concerned in preserving healthy bodies, in combating disease, and in restoring health to the sick." He thus showed the three aspects of medicine namely, public health, preventive medicine, and treatment of specific diseases. he listed seven principles for the preservation of health:
1. Moderation and balance in motion and rest.
2. Moderation in eating and drinking.
3. Elimination of superfluities.
4. Improvement and regulation of dwelling places.
5. Avoidance of excessive evil happenings before they become uncontrollable.
6. Maintenance of harmony in ambitions and resolutions.
7. Acquisition of reticence through possession of good habits including exercise.

He also published another book called "Al-Murshid". In it, he emphasized the important lines of therapy that we mentioned earlier. He described the different types of fever including continuous, relapsing, and hectic. He stated that fever can be a symptom of a disease or a disease in itself. He introduced mercury as a therapeutic drug for the first time in history, which was later adopted in Europe. He realized that a man normally does not want to get sick, and he wants to recover as soon as possible. However, if a patient does not have the will or the desire to get well, the physician's hands are tied and cannot help him. He stressed the continued medical education of the physician. He advised him to record his own observations. He encouraged him to meet with other physicians to discuss medical problems. He recommended that the physicians should try solving these problems rather than depending on others for finding solutions.

Another book written by Al-Razi was named "Al-Hawi", which means the complete text. It was composed of 22 volumes. It was one of the main text books in the medical school in Paris, especially its 9th volume on pharmacology.

He wrote a treatise on measles and smallpox called "de Peste or de Pestilentia" which was translated to Latin in 1565 A.D. It is a masterpiece in clinical medicine (Browne 1962). It describes the clinical difference between the two diseases so vividly that nothing since has been added (Keys 1971).