ABDALLATIF or ABD-UL-LATIF (1 162—I 231) , physician and traveller, was born and died in Baghdad. A memoir of Abdallatif, written by himself, has been preserved with additions by Ibn-Abu-Osaiba (Ibn abi Usaibia), a contemporary. He visited Mosul, Damascus and Egypt and then joined the circle of learned men whom Saladin gathered around him at Jerusalem. He taught medicine and philosophy at Cairo and at Damascus for a number of years, and afterwards, for a shorter period, at Aleppo.
Of the numerous works—mostly on medicine—which Osaiba ascribes to him, one only, his graphic and detailed Account of Egypt, appears to be known in Europe. The manuscript, discovered by Edward Pococke, the Orientalist, and preserved in the Bodleian Library, contains a vivid description of a famine caused by the Nile failing to overflow its banks. It was translated into Latin by Professor White of Oxford in 1800 and into French, with valuable notes, by De Sacy in 181o.
the name borne by five princes of the Omayyad dynasty, amirs and caliphs of Cordova.