In 11th-century Persia, a surgeon's apprentice disguises himself as a Jew to study at a school that does not admit Christians.
When nine-year-old Rob Cole felt the life force slipping from his mother's hand he could not foresee that this terrifying awareness of impending death was a gift that would lead him from the familiar life of 11th-century London to small villages throughout England and finally to the medical school at Isfahan. Though apprenticed to an itinerant barber surgeon, it is the dazzling surgery of a Jewish physician trained by the legendary Persian physician Avicenna (Ibn Sina) that inspires him to accept his gift and to commit his life to healing by studying at Avicenna's school. Despite the ban on Christian students, Rob goes there, disguising himself as a Jew to gain admission. Gordon has written an adventurous and inspiring tale of a quest for medical knowledge pursued in a violent world full of superstition and prejudice.—Literary Guild alternate
In 11th-century England, the mother of young Rob Cole has side sickness (appendicitis) and he foresees her death when he touches her. The orphan Rob is alone and he follows a traveling barber-surgeon that teaches him how to cure the needy. When the barber is blind with cataract, Rob Cole seeks out a Jewish physician that recovers the barber's vision. Rob Cole decides to learn medicine with the famous Ibn Sina in the distant Persia. Along his one-year journey, Rob makes a circumcision on himself and changes his name to Jesse Ben Benjamin, posing of Jewish to be accepted by Ibn Sina's school in Isfahan. Further he falls in love with Rebecca that is traveling to Isfahan in the same caravan to get married in a marriage of convenience. Jesse learns medicine with Ibn Sina while he performs forbidden experience with a corpse and has sex with Rebecca. When the mullahs betray the Shah Ala ad-Daula to the Seljuk, the lives of Ibn Sina, Jesse and their friends are deeply affected.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Director Philipp Stölzl adapts author Noah Gordon's novel about an 11th-century orphan who devotes his life to conquering death after his mother perishes when he is just a child, leaving him to fend for himself in an English mining town. In his quest to become a physician, the young boy studies medicine under renowned Persian expert Ibn Sina. Though the road to enlightenment is a difficult one, the young boy forms many human connections that instill him with the fortitude to pursue his ambitious goal.
It is the Dark Ages, and the Church is fighting against 'black magic'. The medical knowledge of Greek physicians like Hippocrates and Galen had been lost to the medicine of medieval Europe (until taught later in schools such as the School of Salerno after the Arabic-Latin translation movement of the 12th century). In 11th-century England, travelling barber surgeons attempted to supply medical care to the ordinary population, often at the risk of the Church persecuting them for witchcraft.
Robert Cole (Tom Payne) has an extraordinary gift, where he can sense when someone left untreated has a terminal illness. He notices this for the first time when he feels it as a little boy when his sick mother is dying of appendicitis, a disease he was unaware of. The young orphan joins an itinerant barber-surgeon who calls himself Barber (Stellan Skarsgård). Barber teaches him the basics of medieval medicine, with services such as cupping therapy, bloodletting, and dental extraction. Even as an apprentice Rob recognizes the limitations of these simple practices.
When Barber suffers from a cataract, Rob consults a real Medicus for him. This Hebrew doctor heals Barber completely. He learns a little bit of Hebrew culture. He speaks with two children, Jesse and Benjamin. There, Rob sees for the first time a world map and learns of the famous Ibn Sina (Ben Kingsley), who teaches medicine in distant Persia. So, he decides to train there to become a physician.
During the Islamic Golden Age, the medicine in the medieval Islamic world (evolved from a symbiosis of Gondishapur Iranian medicine and Nestorian Byzantine medicine in Baghdad's House of Wisdom) is far more advanced than in Europe. The doctor, scientist and philosopher Ibn Sina teaches in Isfahan, the most important school for aspiring practitioners in the world at that time.
Rob is told Christians are forbidden in Muslim lands while Hebrews are tolerated. Upon arriving in Egypt, Rob, even though he is a baptized Christian, performs a circumcision on himself and calls himself Jesse Ibn Benjamin, pretending to be a Hebrew. In a caravan he comes to know Rebecca (Emma Rigby) who reads to him from a book about Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor. He experiences a desert storm and almost dies. When he asks for admission to the hospital and school of Ibn Sina, he is thrown out and beaten by guards. Lying in the street with a cut and a concussion he is found by the Guardian, so then he is taken in as a patient.
In a Bimaristan hospital and Madrasa college, he is treated by Ibn Sina and made a student to learn the basics of scientific medicine as well as other sciences and philosophy (including Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy). Rob learns to perform a medical history and medical examination including pulse diagnosis, the leech treatment, the use of opium, including the analgesic effect, and surgical procedures.
When a plague breaks out in the city and thousands die, the doctors remain at the patients' side. With the discovery of basic hygienic principles, the plague is overcome. Rob suggests that oriental rat fleas may be the carriers of the Black Death, and with rat poison the pest may be suppressed. Rob's passion for Rebecca flares up again, since her husband temporarily abandons the city, leaving her to become sick and Rob nurses her back to health. There is extramarital sex between Rob and Rebecca that results in a pregnancy. Adultery leads to the threat of a stoning. Rob learns from the Shah (Olivier Martinez) about the burden of ruling. The Shah is a progressive ruler, who supports the arts & medicine. He is despised by the religious zealots who see progress as an obstacle to their domination of the populace.
The Seljuks are a nomadic tribe, trying to conquer the Shah's kingdom. The Shah beheads the son of the Seljuck leader, when he comes with a peace proposal. In return, it was the Seljuck leader who had unleashed the plague upon the Shah's city, which was later conquered by Rob & Ibn Sina.
The Christian, Hebrew and Islamic religions influence the evaluation of medical science, and a conflict is sparked by the ethical assessment of the autopsy on the human body. As a Zoroastrian dies of appendicitis, Rob learns from him that he does not require his dead body for his religion. Rob secretly performs an autopsy on his body to deepen his knowledge of anatomy and to discover the inflamed vermiform appendix. When the mullahs discover what he has done, both Rob and Ibn Sina are sentenced to death for necromancy but are freed by palace guards so Rob can perform an appendectomy, while using anesthesia, on the Shah.
Isfahan is betrayed by the mullahs (the religious zealots), to the Seljuks, since they want to drive the Hebrews and secular blasphemers like Ibn Sina out of town. A crowd destroys the hospital and kills the employees. Ibn Sina heads to the burning library and transfers his medical writings to Rob Cole, and also awards him the medical title 'Hakim.' Ibn Sina then stays to die in the burning library.
Rob Cole, as well as others, escape through a gate the Shah has told them about while he and his men go to make a last stand against the Seljuks. Rob returns with Rebecca, as his wife, back to London and establishes a hospital. The old Barber, Cole's first teacher, learns from a little boy of the return of his former pupil and of his fame.
