HOSPITALS

• The hospital was one of the great achievements of medieval Islamic society.
• In Islam there was generally a moral imperative to treat all the ill regardless of their financial status.
• The hospitals were largely secular institutions, many of them open to all, male and female, civilian and military, adult and child, rich and poor, Muslims and non-Muslims. They tended to be large, urban structures.
• Of the great Syro-Egyptian hospitals of the 12th and 13th centuries, we possess a considerable amount of information.
• There was a separate hall for women patients and areas reserved for the treatment of conditions prevalent in the area -- eye ailments, gastrointestinal complaints (especially dysentery and diarrhoea), and fevers. There was also an area for surgical cases and a special ward for the mentally ill.
• Hospitals in Islamic lands were financed from the revenues of pious bequests called waqfs. Wealthy men, and especially rulers, donated property as endowments, whose revenue went toward building and maintaining the institution.
• Part of the state budget also went toward the maintenance of a hospital.