Haly Abbas’ (? 930-994 AD) Pulsology

Abū l-Ḥasan Alī ibn al-‘Abbās al-Majūsī Ahvazi (? 930-994 AD), best known as Haly Abbas in the West, was a 10th century Persian physician whose lifetime coincided with the flourishing of medical science in the Near East, the Islamic Medicine Golden Age, an era extending from the 9th to the 12th centuries AD. Haly Abbas, in his extant book Kāmil al-Sinā‘ah al-Tibbīyah (The Perfect Book of the Art of Medicine), provided a detailed description of the pulse and its features. He practiced the evaluation of the pulse cycles to distinguish between the state of well-being and various diseases. These 10th century views on the pulse are explored in this text through a discussion of Haly Abbas’ surviving book, the Kāmil al-Sinā‘ah al-Tibbīyah (The Perfect Book of the Art of Medicine).