Sabuncuoglu’s Contributions To Albucasis’s Book On Surgery In His Manuscript Named Cerrahiyyetu’l-Haniyye (Imperial Surgery)

Other, pp.194, 2017

The manuscript named Cerrahiyyetü’l-Haniyye (Imperial Surgery) by the

renowned 15th century Ottoman physician and surgeon Serefeddin Sabuncuoğlu (1386-

1468) is considered the most important illustrated book on surgery depicting human

figures in Turkish-Islamic literature and was the first medical text written in Ottoman

Turkish. This significant achievement, which made Sabuncuoğlu famous, is actually in

large part a translation of the 30th chapter of the book Kitabü’t-Tasrif fit-Tıb (Et-

Tasrif) by Muslim physician Albucasis (Zehravi) (936-1013). The colored illustrations

showing procedures performed on human figures drawn in the style of miniatures that

Sabuncuğlu included in his translation were particularly innovative for 15th century

Islamic medicine. Cerrahiyyetü’l-Haniyye is the first work in the Turkish-Islamic

world in which the human body was depicted with the aim of explaining surgical

techniques, and as such is a unique work. In his translation, Sabuncuoğlu not only

added drawings of human figures, which until that time had not been seen in Turkish-

Islamic medicine and were taboo, but also created a unique work by injecting his own

knowledge and experience. The book has been the subject of numerous studies,

particularly with regard to the original illustrations. However, to this day, there has not

been a thorough presentation of Sabuncuoğlu’s contributions to Zehravi’s

text. Therefore, this paper aims to present the contributions that Sabuncuoğlu made to

the original text in his translation of Zehravi’s book.