Al-Zahrawi

Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, known in Latin as Albucasis, was a Berber physician and surgeon of al-Andalus who served as court physician to the caliph al-Hakam II in Cordoba. He is considered one of the greatest surgical minds of the Middle Ages, credited with identifying the hereditary nature of haemophilia and describing abdominal pregnancy, and with introducing over 200 surgical instruments along with the use of catgut sutures. His thirty-volume medical encyclopedia, Kitab al-Tasrif, became the standard European surgical text for roughly five centuries after its Latin translation.