Sheikh Muhammad Abdolrahman

Ali ibn Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman was a prominent Persian physician who is thought to have lived in the 17th century. Little is known of this author. What is certain is that he composed a large Persian medical encyclopedia, in didactic verse, titled Jawahir al-maqal ("The Gems of Discourse") which is preserved in only two copies: one at The National Library of Medicine, and one in Oxford University. It is thought that he was a rather recent figure, probably from the seventeenth century. But he must certainly have lived before 1791, when an owner's note was appended to the undated NLM manuscript.