Dear Dr Roper
I am impressed and very grateful to András Riedlmayer' for his  comments and research in locating the articles that I had initially inquired about. He has certainly made us aware through the example  of Birmaristans of the lack of authoritative works on the internet / Wikipedia.
Best wishes
Jasmine

-----Original Message-----
From: Circulation list for MELCOM UK [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of G.J. Roper
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 12:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: Re: articles by Noshwrawy and NurEddine on Bimaristans


I am not sure whether you will all have seen András Riedlmayer's detailed and careful response to a query recently raised on H-Islamart as well as on the MELCOM lists. (Apologies to those who have.) I forward it below, both for information and as a good case study of the inadequacy of facilities such as Google and Wikipedia as guides to bibliographical sources for research. We all know this, but clearly many others do not -- including perhaps some in authority who doubt the continued need for bibliographers or even librarians.
--
==============================================
Dr Geoffrey Roper
Bibliographical & Editorial Consultant
   (Middle Eastern & Muslim areas & languages) Leith, St Mark's Hill, Surbiton London, KT6 4LW,  Great Britain

[log in to unmask]        +44 (0) 20 8390 0497
==============================================

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: 	[log in to unmask]
Date: 	October 6, 2010

Dear Jasmine Ansari,

The two citations you are trying to track down

   Noshwrawy, A.R., The Islamic Biarmistans in the Middle Ages,
   Arabic Translation by M. Kh. Badra

   Nur Eddine, Bimaristan: Great Medical Edifice of the Islamic Civilization.

both apparently came from the English Wikipedia entry for "Bimaristan"  
--  which has them exactly in the form you have them (including the same misspellings).

Please note that, like so much of what one finds in Wikipedia, the information in this Wikipedia entry cannot be relied upon to be accurate or complete.  The two citations are missing key information and both are badly mangled -- words and names are misspelled; and in the case of the second title, the reference is to a publication in Arabic, but the title is given only in English translation and not in the original Arabic.

However, with a bit of digging and help from my librarian colleagues at Harvard and Yale, I was able to identify and locate both of them.

The author "Noshwrawy, A.R."  turns out to be a Pakistani gentleman named Abdurra'uf Naushihravi, who has written books and articles on various subjects, among them popular works about the history of Islamic science, in his native Pushto.

A short article by Mr. Naushihravi on Islamic bimaristans of the Middle Ages was translated into Arabic by Muhammad Khayr Badrah and was published in vol.6, no. 21 (1985) pp. 200-207 of the journal al- Turath al-'Arabi (Damascus).  The name of the journal means "The Arab Legacy". The journal al-Turath al-'Arabi is available in a number of academic and research libraries in the U.K. You can find it in the British Union Catalogue -- http://copac.ac.uk/

The short article "Nur Eddine Bimaristan: Great Medical Edifice of the Islamic Civilization," appeared in the online newsletter ArabicNews
(16 January 1999). Please note that (despite the comma in the Wikipedia entry, which is not in the original publication), "Nur Eddine" is not the name of an author -- it is part of the title. This short, unsigned article briefly describes the great bimaristan built in Damascus in 1154 AD <http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=7514> by the Atabeg Mahmud Nur al-Din Zangi, who ruled much of Syria and adjacent areas in the second half of the 12th century.

The original URL for this article is http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/990116/1999011635.html , but the page does not always load correctly. You can find an archived version of the Web page in the Internet archive -- http://tinyurl.com/29dftxd .

Both articles are brief overviews, intended for a general readership.  
They're hardly worth the trouble it took to find them.

For more serious research on bimaristans, both as buildings and as institutions, I recommend you look in library catalogues (such as
COPAC) and indexes (such as Index Islamicus) for scholarly publications on the history of Islamic science and medicine, as well as specific studies such as:

Histoire des bimaristans (hôpitaux) à l'époque islamique: discours prononcé au Congrès médical tenu au Caire à l'occasion du centenaire de l'École de médecine et de l'Hôpital Kasr-el-Aïni en décembre 1928, par le Dr. Ahmed Issa Bey (Cairo, 1928 etc.). 110 pp.

The same author also published an expanded Arabic version: Tārīkh al- bīmāristānāt fī al-Islām / ta’līf Aḥmad ‘Īsá (Damascus, 1939), 259 pp. It was recently reprinted as part of the volume:  Min tārīkh al-ṭibb al-Islāmī, ed. by Ahmad Ibrahim al-Hawari (Cairo, 2005).  ISBN: 9773221687  9789773221683

I hope this helps,

András

====================
András Riedlmayer, Bibliographer
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture Fine Art Library - Harvard University Cambridge MA 02138 USA
http://agakhan.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k69205&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup104228

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