# The Ottoman Gift That Changed Medicine

An episode of [The Story of Turkey: From Byzantium to the Ottoman Empire to Today — Fexingo History](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1895450461), 1 Aug 2026, 8:29.

Audio: https://audio.fexingo.com/history/the-story-of-turkey/episode-0191.mp3

In 1575, the Ottoman Sultan Murad III sent a gift to the Queen of France: a silk robe, a diamond, and a sheaf of paper. But the paper wasn't ordinary—it held a manuscript that would upend European medicine. This episode tells the story of that manuscript: Ahmad al-Maqqari's Commentary on Ibn Nafis, a work that described pulmonary circulation 300 years before William Harvey. We trace the rise of Ibn Nafis, the 13th-century physician who dared to challenge Galen; the Ottoman scholars who preserved his insights; and the French doctors who, in the 19th century, finally recognized what had been hiding in plain sight. Along the way, we meet the Syrian physician Ibn al-Nafis, the Italian anatomist Realdo Colombo, the French translator Antoine Barthélemy Clot, and the Ottoman surgeon Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu. This is a story of transmission, rivalry, and the quiet power of a manuscript that crossed empires. #IbnNafis #PulmonaryCirculation #OttomanMedicine #MuradIII #HistoryOfMedicine #Galen #WilliamHarvey #RealdoColombo #ArabicMedicine #ByzantiumToOttoman #FexingoHistory #MedicalHistory #Manuscripts #16thCentury #13thCentury #HistoryOfScience #OttomanEmpire #Anatomy Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo

## Transcript

Lucas: So we've been tracing the Ottoman story from the fall of Constantinople to the wars and the sultans. But one thing we haven't touched is how the empire shaped science — and how a single manuscript could change the way Europe understood the human body.
Luna: A manuscript? That sounds like a detective story.
Lucas: It kind of is. In 1575, the Ottoman sultan Murad III sent an embassy to France, to Queen Catherine de' Medici. The gifts were mostly what you'd expect — silk robes, jewels, a diamond. But among the diplomatic niceties was a sheaf of paper that looked unremarkable. It was a medical commentary, written in Arabic, and it contained a discovery that Western Europe wouldn't catch up to for another three hundred years.
Luna: What kind of discovery?
Lucas: Pulmonary circulation. The movement of blood from the heart to the lungs and back. Today it's basic biology, but in the 1500s, the standard teaching was still Galen's — the Greek physician from the second century who insisted blood moved in a single system, with no real understanding of circulation. Galen's authority was so absolute that even Leonardo da Vinci didn't fully overturn him. But a thirteenth-century physician from Damascus had already described it correctly.
Luna: Wait, the thirteenth century? That's centuries before Harvey.
Lucas: Exactly. The physician was Ibn Nafis — full name Ala al-Din Abu'l-Hasan Ali ibn Abi Hazm al-Qarshi al-Dimashqi. He was born in 1213 near Damascus, trained as a physician, and eventually moved to Cairo, where he became the chief physician at the great al-Nasiri hospital. In his twenties, around 1236, he wrote a commentary on Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine — the standard medical textbook in the Islamic world. And in that commentary, he laid out the pulmonary transit in detail, correcting Galen and Ibn Sina both.
Luna: So how did he figure it out? He couldn't have done dissections the way we do.
Lucas: He did perform dissections — animal ones, mostly, since human dissection was rare in that era. But his key insight was logical. He reasoned that since the blood from the right ventricle goes to the lungs, and the air from the lungs mixes with the blood, the blood must pass through the lungs to get to the left side. He described the lungs as having small passages and pores — what we now call capillaries, though he couldn't see them. He even suggested that the heart's septum is too dense for blood to pass through directly, which was a direct contradiction of Galen, who said blood seeped through invisible pores in the wall between the ventricles.
Luna: So he was right, but no one in Europe knew about it.
Lucas: Right. The manuscript circulated in the Islamic world for centuries. Ottoman scholars kept it alive, translated it into Turkish, used it in their own medical teaching. But it stayed in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, and European physicians had little access to it. That's where Murad III's gift comes in. The French translator and doctor Antoine Barthélemy Clot, who worked in Egypt in the 19th century, was one of the first to bring it to Europe's attention. He published a paper in 1836, pointing out that Ibn Nafis had described pulmonary circulation centuries before William Harvey. And then the controversy really started.
Luna: Because Harvey is considered the father of modern physiology.
Lucas: Exactly. Harvey published his work on circulation in 1628, based on meticulous experiments. He didn't know about Ibn Nafis. But there was also an Italian anatomist, Realdo Colombo, who described pulmonary circulation in 1559 — and then claimed it as his own discovery. Some argue that Colombo might have had access to Arabic sources, maybe through the Ottoman embassy or through trade, but there's no direct evidence. It's a classic case of independent discovery, or maybe transmission that we can't trace.
Luna: But the manuscript itself — what happened to the one sent to France?
Lucas: That's the beautiful twist. It ended up in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where it sat for centuries. It was only in the 20th century that scholars really realized what was in it. And there's another twist: one of the Ottoman physicians who copied and transmitted Ibn Nafis's work was Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu, a 15th-century surgeon from the Ottoman court. He actually illustrated Ibn Nafis's text with surgical instruments and procedures. That manuscript is now in Istanbul, and it's a stunning example of Ottoman medical illustration.
Luna: So the Ottomans were preserving and building on this, and Europe just missed it for centuries.
Lucas: In a way, yes. And that's why this story matters for our show — it's a side of the Ottoman Empire that doesn't get enough attention. They weren't just conquerors and administrators. They were patrons of science and medicine, building on the work of earlier Islamic scholars, and some of that knowledge eventually made its way to Europe — even if it took a few centuries.
Luna: It makes you think about all the other lost manuscripts out there.
Lucas: It does. And you know, it reminds me of something about this show. We're able to tell these stories because we're independent — no network, no advertisers. It's just a small team and a lot of research. And honestly, the only reason we can keep making these episodes is because a handful of listeners chip in a few dollars a month through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's not much, but it covers the costs and keeps the show going.
Luna: Yeah, and it's because of that support that we can dig into these obscure stories.
Lucas: So if you've been enjoying these conversations, and you want to see more deep dives like this, that's the way to help. It's not a big production — just us talking, but that's exactly what makes Fexingo History feel like a conversation rather than a lecture.
Lucas: Anyway, back to medicine. Because there's a darker side to this story, too. Ibn Nafis's work wasn't just about circulation. He also wrote about anatomy, and his commentary included a detailed account of the heart's structure, correcting Galen on several points. But his ideas didn't spread widely even in the Islamic world, partly because later scholars preferred to stick to the established authorities. So even in places where his work was known, it didn't always change practice.
Luna: So even the Ottomans didn't fully embrace it?
Lucas: Not as a radical departure. They respected Ibn Nafis, but for centuries, Galen still reigned. The Ottoman medical tradition was conservative in its own way, just like Europe's. It took a while for new ideas to break through. But the fact that his manuscript was copied and preserved shows that there was interest. And when European scholars finally discovered it, they had to admit that the discovery wasn't new after all.
Lucas: There's a poetic irony in that: the Ottoman Empire, which some Europeans considered backward, was actually the custodian of a scientific discovery that would later be claimed by one of Europe's greatest anatomists. It challenges the narrative we often inherit about the 'dark ages' of the East and the 'enlightenment' of the West.
Luna: It's like the story of the Library of Alexandria — knowledge passing through different hands.
Lucas: Exactly. And that's part of the reason we started this show — to uncover those connections. Because the history of Turkey, of Byzantium, of the Ottoman Empire, isn't just about politics and wars. It's about ideas, and how they travel across borders and centuries.
Luna: So what's the next thread you want to pull?
Lucas: Maybe next episode we could look at how Ottoman medicine actually worked in practice — hospitals, doctors, and the famous Ottoman medical school in Edirne. There's a fascinating story about how they handled mental illness, with music therapy and gardens — a far cry from the chains and dungeons of some European asylums. But that's for another day. For now, I want to leave you with this image: a sultan's gift, a manuscript, and a revelation that took three centuries to cross the Mediterranean.

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