Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān (Mansur’s Anatomy), Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf Ibn Ilyās

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Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf Ibn Ilyās, Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān (Mansur’s Anatomy)
Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf Ibn Ilyās, Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān (Mansur’s Anatomy)
Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf Ibn Ilyās
Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān (Mansur’s Anatomy)
1600s (original 1400s)
Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf Ibn Ilyās
1380–1422
Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān (Mansur’s Anatomy), 1600s (original 1400s)
Where object was made: Persia (present-day Iran)
Material/technique: printing; paper
Credit line: Clendening History of Medicine Library and Museum, University of Kansas Medical Center
Accession number: EL2020.046
Not on display
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Healing, Knowing, Seeing the Body
The Persian scholar, physician, and anatomist Manṣūr ibn Ilyās is widely credited with creating the first color atlas of the human body in the early 1400s. Organized into five chapters, the manuscript explores, through illustration and extensive notation, the skeleton, nervous system, muscles, veins, and arteries, with a final section depicting a pregnant woman. Mansur’s Anatomy was used in other Persian and Arabic medical treatises for more than 200 years. Much of the scholarship on early anatomists overlooks those working in the Medieval Islamic world, largely due to the still-debated assumption that religious beliefs prohibited the dissection of human bodies. Regardless of whether it evinces human dissection, Mansur’s Anatomy was still significant in that the use of color was previously considered to be against Islamic law.
Healing, Knowing, Seeing the Body
The Persian scholar, physician, and anatomist Manṣūr ibn Ilyās is widely credited with creating the first color atlas of the human body in the early 1400s. Organized into five chapters, the manuscript explores, through illustration and extensive notation, the skeleton, nervous system, muscles, veins, and arteries, with a final section depicting a pregnant woman. Mansur’s Anatomy was used in other Persian and Arabic medical treatises for more than 200 years. Much of the scholarship on early anatomists overlooks those working in the Medieval Islamic world, largely due to the still-debated assumption that religious beliefs prohibited the dissection of human bodies. Regardless of whether it evinces human dissection, Mansur’s Anatomy was still significant in that the use of color was previously considered to be against Islamic law.

Exhibitions

Healing, Knowing, Seeing the Body
Cassandra Mesick Braun, curator
2021