He studied medicine with a gorup of Hellenists presided over by Hasday ibn Shaprut, a Jewish physician and vizier of the Caliph Abd Al-Rahman II. Ibn Juljul later became medical advisor of the Caliph Hisham II (976-1009).
Ibn Juljul is the author of Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ w’al-hukamā’ (Generations of physicians and Wise Men), the oldest extant summary in Arabic on the history of medicine, after Ishaq ibn Hunayn’s Ta’rij al-atibba (History of the Physician)
In Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ w’al-hukamā’ Ibn Juljuul enumerates medical doctors practicing during the reigns of Muhammad and Abd al-Rahman II.
These include a monk named Jawad, famed for his medicines and potions; Khalid Ibn Yazid Ruman, similarly reputed for his botanical drugs and Ibn Maluka, a Cordoban surgeon and bleeder who had thirty chairs for patients set up at the door of his house.
It contains fifty-seven biographies grouped into nine generations; thirty-one of them concern Asian authors and the rest refer to African and Andalusian scholars.
A number of these are Christians, whose main medical manual is a world known as ‘The Aphorisms’ of which an updated version in five books was produced by the Muslim doctor Yahya b. Imam.
Ibn Juljul mentioned several Christian physicians, whom he said were the most eminent medical men in al-Andalus until the middle of the ninth century, when medical texts arrived from the east and Christian learning became obsolete.
Ibn Juljul also wrote Tafsir asma al-adwiya al-mufradat min kitab diyusquridis (An Explanation of the names of Simple Drugs in the book of Dioscorides).
Ibn Juljul has explained the terms for simple remedies in the work of Dioscorides from ‘Ain Zarbah and clarified their hidden meaning.
Ibn Juljul - Andalusian author