Download or read book Mamluks and Animals written by Housni Alkhateeb Shehada and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Housni Alkhateeb Shehada's Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam is the first comprehensive study of veterinary medicine, its practitioners and its patients in the medieval Islamic world, with special emphasis on the Mamluk period (1250-1517). Based on a large variety of sources, it is a history of a scientific field that is also examined from social and cultural perspectives. Horses, as well as birds of prey used for hawking and falconry, were at the centre of the veterinary literature of that period, but the treatment and cure of other animals was not totally neglected. The Mamluk period is presented here as the time when veterinary medicine reached its pinnacle in medieval Islam and often even surpassed human medicine.