Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari
Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari () (c. 838 – c. 870 CE; also given as 810–855 or 808–864 also 783–858), was a Persian Muslim scholar, physician and psychologist, who produced one of the first encyclopedia of medicine titled "Firdous al-Hikmah" ("Paradise of wisdom"). Ali ibn Sahl spoke Syriac and Greek, the two sources of the medical tradition of Antiquity which had been lost by medieval Europe, and transcribed in meticulous calligraphy. His famous student Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi has darkened his fame. He wrote the first encyclopedic work on medicine . He lived for over 70 years and interacted with important figures of the time, such as Muslim caliphs, governors, and eminent scholars. Because of his family's religious history, as well as his religious work, al-Tabarī was one of the most controversial scholars. He first discovered that the pulmonary tuberculosis was contagious. Outside the rational sciences, as a convert from Christianity to Islam he was also involved in interreligious polemics, writing two works critical of his former religion, "Al-Radd ´alā l-Nasārā" (The Refutation of the Christians) and "Kitāb al-dīn wa-l-dawla" (The Book of  Religion and Empire), both of which having been published by Brill in 2016 in a single book, "The Polemical Works of ʿAlī al-Ṭabarī". Life. Ali came from a Persian or Syriac family of Tabaristan Amol (hence "al-Tabari" – "from Tabaristan"). Hossein Nasr states that he was a convert to Islam from Zoroastrianism, however Sami K. Hamarneh and Franz Rosenthal state he was a convert from Christianity. His father Sahl ibn Bishr was a state official, highly educated and well respected member of the Syriac community. Rabbān received his educational bases in the medical field, natural sciences, calligraphy, mathematics, philosophy  and literature from his father Sahl. The Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim (833–842) took him into the service of the court, which he continued under al-Mutawakkil (847–861). Ali ibn Sahl was fluent in Syriac and Greek, the two sources for the medical tradition of antiquity, and versed in fine calligraphy. His works. Although few of them are still found today, Al-Tabarī left 12 books to mankind. Most of them were about medicine. In addition to medicine, he was known as a scholar of philosophy, mathematics and astronomy. Section::::"Firdous al-Hikmah". "Firdous al-Hikmah" is one of the oldest encyclopedias  of Islamic medicine, based on Syriac translations of Greek and Indian sources (Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, and others).It is divided into 7 sections and 30 parts, with 360 chapters in total.