A Physician of the Sixteenth Century, Sururi (Mustafa Muslihiddin b. Shaban)

Abstract

Sururi was a physician who lived in thc sixteenth century in the Ottoman Empire. He lived during the reign of Sultan Sulayman. He translated some important works from Arabic and Persian to Turkish. One of his translations is Jurjani's famous work, Zahire-i Muradiyye's pharmacological section. It was named Tarcuma-i Akrabadin. His another translation is Ibn Nafis' famous work, Mucaz that is about the diseases of the body beginning from the head to the foot. In his translation, at first he gave the original Arabic text and then his commentary about that part. As a physician Sururi did not translate the text word by word, but time to time he gave his opinions and special explanation. However he treated the first book, Jurjani's work's translation is not word by word translation either; he also gave some commentaries place to place. Sururi also wrote a book on how a most perfect city should have been. This book mainly resembles to the Farabi's Medinet al-Fadıla. In that book he gave information about the people of a ideal city; the principles that its people obey; its laws, relationship of people in there. In this paper we will make evaluation of his works, beginning from his book on Ideal City and we explains his medical works (especially the commentasyon Ibn Nafis al-Mucez) in detail.