Great Muslim Physician and Islamic Jurist: A Portrait of Ibn Al-Nafis

The aim of this paper is to examine the life and works of Ibn al-Nafis, and to assess his contributions to the fields of medicine and Islamic jurisprudence. The paper sheds light on his background (including his extensive study of medicine) and his scholarly writings on both medicine and Islamic jurisprudence, with emphasis on the theoretical frameworks he developed for the two disciplines. As he was a man of ideas and a prolific writer, the study also traces the opinions others had of him to determine his intellectual impact on his contemporaries and those who came after. Finally, the paper assesses and discusses the validity and value of his medical theories and his views on Islamic jurisprudence, to explain why they have won him the admiration of his fellow Muslim scholars.