Founder of Damascus Medical Syndicate – Ahmed al-Khayat Arabicized Medical Research

Damascus History Foundation sought to correct the autobiography of Ahmad Hamdi al-Khayat (1899-1981), on the Wikipedia Arabic International Encyclopedia. Al- Khayat was a Syrian doctor and one of the founding fathers of the University of Damascus and the Medical Syndicate.

He was born to a Damascene family known for the art of woodcarving and marquetry. He studied at the Medical Institute and graduated at the end of World War I, in 1918.

Al-Khayyat was appointed as supervisor of the Serum and Germs Foundation, that was established by the King Faisal government, and then he traveled to Paris to complete his specialty at the Louis Pasteur Institute and then moved to Berlin where he learned the German language. After that, he treturned to Damascus as a teacher of microbiology at the Institute of Arab Medicine in 1919 -1923, during which he worked as a member of the teaching staff at Damascus University until 1958.

The laboratory, which al-Khayyat  founded, was the first of its kind in the country. On the educational level, the Medical Institute printed his book Science of Bacteriology and Art of Bacteriology.

Al-Khayyat is highly valued for his contribution in the graduation of the first batch of Arab medical school students (48 doctors) in 1919, whose scientific studies were in the Arabic language.

In 1944, and with a group of doctors, al-Khayat established Damascus Doctors Syndicate, and he was the first elected head of it. It is worth mentioning that he was at the head of his work when the French occupied Syria and on May 29, 1945, al-Khayat mobilized all the city’s doctors to aid and hospitalize the wounded.

After the end of the French occupation from Syria in 1946, al- Khayat became Faculty of Medicine Dean at the University of Damascus until 1947, where he worked, with his colleague Dr. Morshed Khater, to  arabize  a lot of medical research, translating the terminology of the “Claire Ville” dictionary into Arabic. They also completed the authorship of the “Dictionary of Medical Sciences,” which is an encyclopedic medical dictionary containing medical terms arranged with French alphabets.

After forty years of teaching, and upon reaching the age of retirement in 1958, the Arab Scientific Academy chose al-Khayyat to join as a working member, but he apologized and retired at his home for a full-time scientific research until he passed away in Damascus on July 4, 1981.

It is noteworthy that Damascus History Foundation is working to improve the digital content related to the history of the city of Damascus on the Wikipedia Arabic International Encyclopedia, in accordance with the agreement with Bilad al-Sham Wikipedia.

Rayan Faouri