Nur ad-Din Bimaristan

12th-century hospital, now the Museum of Medicine and Science

A handsome 12th-century building in the southern part of the Old City, originally a hospital and medical school founded by Nur ad-Din. The arched entrance and stalactite half-dome above the door are early masterpieces of Syrian Islamic architecture. Inside, the central courtyard has a basin, an iwan (vaulted hall) on each side, and rooms that once held patients now occupied by a small medical museum.

Exhibits cover the development of Arab medicine — surgical instruments, an early apothecary, manuscripts of Ibn Sina and al-Razi. The museum is small and rarely crowded. Find it just south of the Hamidiyah Souq, in the lanes off Madhat Pasha Street.

things to do sight museum
A story
The bimaristan, founded in 1154 by the Zengid sultan Nur ad-Din, was for two centuries the leading teaching hospital in the Arab world. Pioneering physicians like Ibn al-Nafis (who described pulmonary circulation 300 years before William Harvey) taught and practised here. The hospital functioned as a hospital until 1899 — over 700 years of continuous medical use.

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