Since its inception Ayurveda has had global appeal. Its influence spread to other parts of the world, namely South East Asia as early as 1000 BC. Trade and cultural relations with Mesopotamia, Gulf countries and Persia as early as the 3rd millennium BC, attracted scholars from Tibet, China, Indo-China, Sri Lanka, Rome, Egypt, Afghanistan and Persia. They travelled to India to learn medical wisdom and the spirituality it sprang from.

During the Islamic period Ayurveda contributed to the development of Arabic medical sciences when translations of Ayurvedic texts were done in Persian (700 AD) and Arabic (800 AD). All the Abbasid Caliphs from Al-Mansur (754–773 AD) to Al-Mutawakkil (847–886 AD) were patrons of arts and sciences. The former, the second Abbasid caliph, received embassies from Sindh, one of which included some Indian pandits who presented him two Indian books on astronomy, The Brahma Siddhanta and the Khandakhadyaka, which by the orders of the Caliph were translated into Arabic by Ibrahim-al-Fazari (786–806 AD).

Yahya bin Khalid (805 AD) the vizier of Caliph Mahdi sent an Arab scholar to India to study and bring Indian drugs and spices. Manaka (Mankha or Minikya) proficient in Ayurveda with a sound knowledge of Indian and Persian languages was deputed as Chief of the Royal Hospital at Baghdad and translated several books from Sanskrit to Persian or Arabic language. Ibn Dhan (Dhanya or Dhanwantri) was an Indian Vaidya at Baghdad who at the behest of Yahya Bin Khalid rendered a few Sanskrit texts into Arabic. Saleh bin Behla a competent practitioner of Ayurveda is known to have cured Ibrahim bin Saleh of apoplexy after being declared dead by the Caliph’s own physicians.

Maulana Shill Numani mentioned as Duban, a well-known Indian orientalist mentions in his scholarly monographs entitled Al-Mamun, the visit of several Indian scientists and experts of Ayurveda to impart Indian medical education and to render scientific books in Pehlavi language in the medical academy and translation Bureau of Jundishapur.

Rhazes (865–965 AD) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina 980–1037 AD) were Arabic medicine scholars who influenced global medical literature for a long time. The ‘Canon of Medicine’ written by Ibn Sina quotes Indian medical texts and has been used for centuries as an authoritative text on Unani medicine. It was translated into Latin in the 12th century AD and was a text book in European Medical Institutes for a long time.

Around 500 BC various Ayurvedic works spread to other parts of the world after being translated into Arabic. Several Ayurvedic texts were translated into Greek by Cnidos (300 BC). The medical historian Major wrote that after the conquest of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, contact with India was established and Indian medical science became part of Greek heritage.

The fact that Greeks followed the four-element theory of earth, air, fire and water and considered the four governing humours of the body as black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm is definitely no mere coincidence or serendipity. The Hippocratic method influenced by Ayurvedic medical thought through Arabic medical literature favoured dietary and life-style adjustments over drug use. Failure of these approaches led to drug preparation and administration. Greek literature mentions that Galen attempted to balance the humours of an ill individual by using drugs (polypharmaceutical preparations) of a supposedly contrary nature. This is starkly reminiscent of the adjustment of dosha imbalance through drugs in Ayurveda.

In 16th century Europe, Paracelsus, known as the father of modern western medicine, practised and propagated a system of medicine (involving minerals) which borrowed heavily from Ayurveda.