Muntakhab al-tawarikh 196: VII. HAKIM ‘ALI.

196

He is sister's son to Hakimu-l-Mulk and was the pupil of his uncle and of Shah Fathu-’llah of Shiraz, in medicine, and studied traditional learning under Shaikh ‘Abdu-n-Nabi. Notwithstanding his great learning in the holy law and in Sunni theology, his malignancy in adhering to the Zaidi sect and his obstinacy in the Shi‘ah heresy, in which matters he resembles the other physicians of the age, are as great as ever they were. His excellence in acquired knowledge, and especially in the science of medicine, is extreme, and he is passionately devoted to the practice of the healing art, but as he is but a youth, self-opinionated and of limited experience, it sometimes happens that a patient, after taking one of his draughts speedily has a taste of the draught of extinction, and notwithstanding the fact that he was the pupil of Shah Fathu-’llah of Shiraz, he ordered him, when he was in an ardent fever, a diet of thick pottage, thereby handing him over to death, the executioner.
“To drink with him is death to the senses.”