Source:Página História Islâmica
Well-known are the men who accompanied Prophet Muhammad during his life, usually for their administrative and military prowess as caliphs and generals, ascetics or great theologians after his death. However, in the popular imagination, little attention is paid especially to the great female figures of primitive Islam, who abounded and surrounded the figure of the Prophet, and laid through their example the bases of several civilizational characteristics that would go down in history as Islamic synonyms.
Characters like Ibn Sina, al-Nafis and al-Zahrawi are known worldwide for their medical legacy, largely attributed to their contact with the Greco-Roman writings on medicine. However, the history of ‘‘ Islamic medicine ’’ is far more original than an imitation of the classical world, and has its origins in the very community that the Prophet sought to create in his quintessential city, Medina.
Born around the year 620 in the city of Yathrib (future Medina) in Arabia, Rufaida bint Saad or '' al-Aslamia '', a nickname originated due to the clan to which she belonged, the Banu Aslam of the Kazraj tribe, started her education in healing art with her father, Saad al-Aslami, who was somewhat versed in the medicine of his time, in that place so far from the great Roman and Persian civilization centers.
With the arrival of Prophet Muhammad in Yathrib in 622, hereafter known as Medina, the young woman Rufaida was one of the first to become a Muslim, and to integrate the growing community of believers. She probably must have caught the Prophet's attention for her wisdom, since Muhammad himself was also a great connoisseur of medicine. Among Muslims, she started to work as a social worker, helping to solve problems associated with the disease, welcoming orphans and helping the needy in general. However, it was at the beginning of the first defense campaigns against the Quraysh attacks that Rufaida stood out the most.
Rufaida Al-Aslamia implemented her clinical skills and medical experience in the development of the first documented mobile care units that were able to meet the medical needs of the community. The scope of most of her work in organized medical command units consisted mainly of hygiene and patient stabilization before additional and more invasive medical procedures.
During military expeditions, Rufaida Al-Aslamia led groups of volunteer nurses, which included the Prophet's famous youngest wife, Aisha, with whom she went to the battlefield and treated the wounded. She participated in the battles of Khandaq, Khaibar and others, having her own nurse's tent commissioned by the Prophet. As a community agent, she was then paid to her auxiliaries with part of the booty obtained by the Muslim army, in the same way as soldiers who had actually fought.
The Prophet even went so far as to order the creation of an annex to his mosque in Medina so that a treatment house for the sick, a kind of paleo-hospital compared to the Islamic mega structures that would come in the following centuries, for Rufaida and assistants to take care of patients.
Rufaida worked this way throughout her life, making history as the first Muslim nurse, more than a millennium before Florence Nightingale, already in the Victorian era, who is considered the first professional nurse in the West. Currently, every year, the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland at the University of Bahrain awards a student with the coveted and prestigious Rufaida Al-Aslamia Nursing Prize, in honor of the first nurse in Islam.