Ophthalmology in the medieval Islamic world

The oculist or kahhal (کحال), a somewhat despised professional in Galen's time, was an honored member of the medical profession by the Abbasid period, occupying a unique place in royal households.

Innovations such as the "injection syringe", a hollow needle, invented by Ammar ibn Ali of Mosul, which was used for the extraction by suction of soft cataracts, were quite common.

[2] The next major landmark text on ophthalmology was the Choice of Eye Diseases written in Egypt by the Iraqi Ammar ibn Ali al-Mawsili[1] who attempted the earliest extraction of cataracts using suction.

[5] In his Colliget, Averroes (1126–1198) was the first to attribute photoreceptor properties to the retina,[6] and he was also the first to suggest that the principal organ of sight might be the arachnoid membrane (aranea).

[8] Other significant works in medieval Islamic ophthalmology include Rhazes' Continens, Ali ibn Isa al-Kahhal's Notebook of the Oculists, and the ethnic Assyrian Christian Jibrail Bukhtishu's Medicine of the Eye, among numerous others.

In the Ottoman Empire, and well into the Republic of Turkey of the 20th century, a class of ambulatory eye surgeons, popularly known as the "kırlangıç oğlanları" ("sons of the swallow") operated on cataract using special knives.