# Canon of Medicine

- id: qanun
- original title: القانون في الطب / al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb
- author: Ibn Sina
- language: Arabic
- composed: c. 1012–1025, Hamadan
- field: medicine

Ibn Sina's complete system of medicine, begun at Jurjan, continued at Rayy and finished at Hamadan around 1024, in the gaps of a political career. In Latin it organized European medical teaching into the 17th century.

## The chain

- **c. 1150–1187** Arabic -> Latin, translation as "Liber Canonis" [attested]
  Gerard of Cremona (translator), Toledo
  Made with his team of collaborators in Toledo. The attribution rests on the Commemoratio librorum, the list of translations his students compiled at his death, where the Canon is item 63. A rival attribution to a 13th-century 'Gerard de Sabloneta' has no medieval testimony behind it.
  Evidence: Lemay 1978 (item 63 in the students' list); Burnett 2001
  - **c. 1473** Latin -> Latin, edition [probable]
    Adolf Rusch (editor), Strasbourg
    The editio princeps, usually credited to Strasbourg around 1473, with Milan 1473 also claimed. About 15 editions followed by 1500, and some 60 more, whole or in part, between 1500 and 1674; Montpellier and Louvain still taught the book around 1650.
    Evidence: Siraisi 1987 (census of the printed editions)
- **1279** Arabic -> Hebrew, translation [attested]
  Nathan ha-Me'ati (translator), Rome
  The first complete Hebrew Canon, finished in Rome in 1279. The Hebrew text was printed at Naples in 1491-92, before the Arabic ever reached print.
  Evidence: Siraisi 1987
- **1593** Arabic -> Arabic, edition [attested]
  Giovanni Battista Raimondi (editor), Rome
  The Medici Oriental Press printed the Arabic text itself in Rome, in type cut for the purpose, largely for export back to the lands that wrote it. The book had waited five and a half centuries for its own language to reach print.
  Evidence: Siraisi 1987

## Worth knowing

Gerard of Cremona never signed his translations. When he died in 1187 his students, afraid his name would vanish, appended to one of his manuscripts a short life and a list of his seventy-plus translations. The Canon is item 63. It was printed about 15 times before 1500 and in some 60 further editions between 1500 and 1674, and was still taught at Montpellier and Louvain around 1650.

## Sources

- Siraisi, Nancy G. (1987). Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500. Princeton University Press.
- Lemay, Richard (1978). Gerard of Cremona. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 15 supplement.
- Gutas, Dimitri (2016). Ibn Sina [Avicenna]. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Confidence grades: attested (named in the medieval record or settled in scholarship), probable (standard view with real uncertainty), disputed (scholars disagree).