Religion and Medicine in Iran: From Relationship to Dissociation

The third form of vocalization is tubb (the name of a place). al-Jawziyya Ibn Qayyim , Medicine of the Prophet, translated by Johnstone Penelope (Cambridge, 1998), 104–5.

Resâleh dar tebb, anonymous, Library of Vaziri in Yazd, no. 2428, undated.

Mohammad Hosein b. Mohammad Hâdi al-'Aqili al-'Alavi, Kholâsat ol-hekmat (The gist of medicine), written in Persian in 1782, lithograph edition in Bombay in 1261/1845, pp. 1–2.

Anonymous , Fehrest-e rashahâl al-fonun (Index of the branches of science), St Petersburg, National Library, copy dated 1227/1812, not paginated.

Presently in Northern Afghanistan.

Pazhdou Zartosht-E Bahrâm , Zarâtosht-Nâmeh (Book of Zoroaster), St Petersburg, National Library, fols. 149–53.

Darmesteter James , Le Zend Avesta, cited by Naficy Abbas , La médecine en Perse, des origines à nos jours (Paris, 1933), 13. See also: Fichtner Horst , Die medizin im Avesta (Leipzig, 1924).

Garrison Fielding H. , “Persian medicine and medicine in Persia”, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, i (1933), 129–53, p. 144.

The question of whether theoretical or institutional factors underlay the religion-medicine relationship, lies outside the scope of this study. This question, with regard to medical reform in Iran, has been addressed in my article, “Theory and practice in nineteenth-century Persian medicine: Intellectual and institutional reforms”, History of science, xxviii (2000), 171–8.

See Jacquart Danielle , Le milieu médical en France du XIIe au XVe siècle (Geneva and Paris, 1981).

Ziegler Joseph , Medicine and religion c. 1300: The case of Arnau de Vilanova (Oxford, 1998), Introduction.

He was born in 1879 in Ardakân, near Yazd, into a clerical family. I am indebted to Mr Nezâmod-din Boqrât, the son of Dr Boqrât ol-Hokamâ, for this information as well as for providing a copy of his father's manuscript.

Hâj Aqâ Hoseyn Tabâtabâ'i (1875–1960), of the Tabâtabâ'i family, was born in Brujerd. After his elementary studies, he went to Ispahan to learn fegh (religious jurisprudence) and philosophy. He later became marja'-e taqlid (or the source of imitation), the first religious authority of Shi'a Law and lived in Qom. In addition to his books on religious sciences and logic, he also wrote a treatise on purgatives for the sick (Monzajât-e mariz). Cf. 'Ali-Akbar Dehkhodâ, Loghatnâmeh (Tehran 1998), iii.

The honorific titles were attributed by the princes or the state to high-ranking doctors before the reform of medical institutions in Iran. Usually these titles, such as Malek ol-atebbâ (Prince of the Physicians), E'temâd ol-atebbâ (Confidant of Physicians), Seyf ol-atebbâ (Sword of Physicians), Soltân ol-hokamâ (Sovereign of Doctors), Sehhat ol-dowleh (Health of the State), indicated official recognition by the state. Such titles established differentiation between official and non-official, genuine and quack doctors. I discussed this subject in a paper “Medicine and politics in Qâjâr Iran”, presented at the Fourth European Conference on Iranian Studies, Paris, 6–10 September 1999.

This manuscript is untitled. Conceivably this anti-carnivorist argument of Boqrât ol-Hokamâ could have some origin in the Zoroastrian philosophy. Yazd, Central Iran, and Kerman, South-East, are two regions in Iran where the Zoroastrians are still concentrated and still have their temples. For some indications on the vegetarian philosophy of Zoroastrianism , cf. Ossipow Laurence , La cuisine du corps et de l'âme (Paris, 1997), 37ff.

The Library of Dr Boqrât ol-Hokamâ contained 330 volumes of Arabic and Persian manuscripts, bequeathed, according to his will, to the Library of Astân-e Qods (Mashhad), and 42 volumes of French printed books, including: Guide-formulaire de thérapeutique by Herzen V. (Paris, undated); Thérapeutique clinique by Huchard H. (Paris, 1909); and Les agents physiques usuels, climato-thérapie, hydrothérapie, … by Martinet A. (Paris, 1909). These books have been donated by Nezâmod-din Boqrât, his son, to the Open University of Neyshâbur.

According to Nezâmod-din Boqrât, interviewed in June 1999, Neyshâbur.

Cf. Movahhedi Mohammad Mehdi , Zendeginâmeh mashâhir-e rejâl-e pezeshki-ye mo'âser-e Iran (Tehran, 1371/1992), 36–37. See also Mir Mohammad Taqi , Pezeshkân-e nâmi-ye fârs (Physicians of Fars), 2nd edn (Shiraz, 1363/1984).

About the growing influence of the Shiite ulema in the nineteenth century see below, ref. 90.

Seyyed Jamâl od-Din Asadâbâdi, nicknamed Afghâni, was an Iranian born in Asad Abâd of Hamedan. For political reasons, particularly to avoid the persecution of the Qajar regime, he had requested Afghan nationality and chosen an Afghan name because at that time Afghanistan was under the protection of the Great Britain. For the biography of Afghâni , cf. Nategh Homa , Seyyed Jamâlod-Din Asadâbâdi, dit Afghâni (Paris, 1971). See also Keddie Nikki , Sayyed Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani”: A political biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972).

For this question cf. Zubaida Sami , Islam, the people and the state: Political ideas and movements in the Middle East (London and New York, 1993). See also Hourani A. , Arabic thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939 (Oxford, 1982).

For a comprehensive book on the shaping of Islamic civilization, see Lapidus Ira M. , A history of Islamic societies (Cambridge, 1991). For further reading see Cleveland William L. , A history of the modern Middle East (San Francisco and Oxford, 1994); Hourani Albert , A history of the Arab people (Cambridge, Mass., 1991); Juynboll G. H. A. (ed.), Studies on the first century of Islamic society (Carbondale, Ill., 1982).

Nasr Seyyed Hossein , Preface to the Medicine of the Prophet of Al-Jawziyya (ref. 1), p. xix.

See for example an anonymous treatise, annexed to the book written by Fakhr al-Hokamâ va Zobdat al-Attebâ Hâji Mirzâ Musâ Sâveji, Dastur al-atebbâ fi 'alâj al-vabâ (Prescription of doctors for the treatment of epidemics), lithograph (Tehran 1269/1852–53), Majles Library, 1–3. It seems that this annex is the second part of the Sâveji's book, hereafter: Sâveji , ad'iya.

Ibid.

Treatise on pharmacopoeia, Persian MSS, St Petersburg National Library, fols. 43–55.

Anonymous treatise on medicine, entitled in the catalogue as Ketâb-e tebb, St Petersburg, Library of the Oriental Institute, 10–11.

Pingree D. , “Astrology in Islamic Iran”, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ii, 869–71, p. 870.

Karim Eitham , Resâleh-ye dallâkiyyeh, St Petersburg National Library, fol. 23b.

Ibid., fol. 7b.

Mohammad b. Majlesi Esfahani, Hadiqat ol-mottaqin (18th century). The date of writing is not mentioned but in the first folio there is a note saying “this book in the year of 1146/1734 was in the hands of Mohammad Ali” (Persian manuscript, Wellcome Trust Library).

Sâveji , ad'iya.

In Sâveji , ad'iya. The Meftâh al-shafâ (Key of healing) referred to by Sâveji is probably the same as that written by Mirzâ Mohammad Kâzm b. Mohammad Sâ'eb, copied in 1265/1848, as the content is very similar to the genre Zâd al-Mosâferin and the author is qualified as A'zam al-Ulema.

The rain that falls in Nisân, the first month of the Hebrew calendar corresponding roughly to April.

Sâveji , ad'iya.

Anonymous, Treatise on ad'iya (prayers), Persian manuscript, St Petersburg, Library of Oriental Institute, fol. 1.

Nadjmabadi M. , Târikh-e tebb dar Iran pas az eslâm (History of medicine in Iran after Islam (Tehran, 1366/1987), 593.

Qayyim Ibn , op. cit. (ref. 1), 108–9.

This rational interpretation of the soul–body relation, and the association of scientific and religious elements, is quite similar to what happened in eighteenth-century England, where, in the case of an amateur doctor, William Dyer of Bristol, treatment by electricity was based on the idea that fire was the moving force of the universe. “Electrical healing revived the animal spirits and removed the obstructions to the vital life, in a process which clearly paralleled the spiritual awakening of the individual by grace.” See Barry Jonathan , “Piety and the patient: Medicine and religion in 18th century Bristol”, in Porter Roy (ed.), Patients and practitioners: Lay perceptions of medicine in pre-industrial society (Cambridge, 1985), 145–76.

Mirzâ Hâji Sâveji Musâ , Dastur al-atebbâ … (ref. 24), 22–32.

'Ali b. Mohammad Ja'far Astarâbâdi, Safineh-ye nuh (Noah's Ark), written about 1310/1892, Library of Ayatollah Mar'ashi, Qom, Iran, fols. 5–7.

Anonymous Persian manuscript, whose catalogue title is resâleh dar khosus-e ta'sis-e marizkhâneh (Treatise on the establishment of the hospital), Tehran, Majles Library, no. 550, pp. 10 and 28–29.

Allâmeh Shamsod-Din Mohammad b. Mahmud-e Amoli, Nafâyes ol-Fonun fi 'arâyes ol-'oyun, ed. by Mirzâ Hâj She'râni Abol-Hasan (3 vols, Tehran, 1337/1958), i, 16ff. See also rashahât Fehrest-E …, op. cit. (ref. 4).

A useful recent work on this subject is Montgomery Scott L. , Science in translation: Movements of knowledge, through culture and time (Chicago and London, 2000).

Elgood Cyril , A medical history of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate (London, 1979), 352.

Anonymous treatise on medicine, entitled in the catalogue as Ketâb-e tebb, Library of the Oriental Institute, St Petersburg, ff. 10–11.

Aqili , Kholâsatol-hekmat (Bombay, 1261/1845), lithograph, 6.

This book, attributed to Imâm Rezâ, the eighth Imâm of the Shiites, was allegedly written about a.d. 832.

Ketâb-e enqelâb-al ruh fi-al badan va qarâr al-mavâze', St Petersburg, Library of Oriental Institute, written in 996/1588.

Qayyim Ibn , Medicine of the Prophet (ref. 1), 19–20.

Ibid., 113–16. For a case-study of contagion in Islam see Conrad Lawrence I. , “A ninth-century Muslim scholar's discussion of contagion”, in Conrad Lawrence I. Wujastyk Dominik (eds), Contagion: Perspectives from pre-modern societies (Aldershot, 2000), 163–77.

Astarabadi , op. cit. (ref. 41), fols. 2–3; see also the appendix to this chapter.

Kahhâl Abu-Zin , Sharâyet-e Jarrâhi (Conditions of surgery), dated 1855, University of California at Los Angeles, MS 61(I), fol. 2.

See for example Javâher ol-hekmat-e Naseri (a translation of Dr Tholozan's lectures) and Javâher ol-tashrih (written by Dr Mirzâ Ali, educated at the Paris Medical Faculty and professor of medicine at Darol-fonun, lithograph, Tehran, 1887) for medicine and Osul-e 'elm-e fizik (written by 'Ali-Khan, professor of Artillery and Physics at that school, lithograph, Tehran, 1295/1878) and Ketâb-e mostatâb-e falak al-sa'âdeh (The excellent book of the sphere of prosperity), written by Prince 'Aliqol-Mierzâ against the practice of astrology, lithograph, Tehran, 1278/1861.

I want to refer here to the modern-minded Islamic scholars such as the late Ali Shari'ati, sociologist and religiously-committed modernist who was considered as the intellectual father of the 1979 (Islamic) Revolution, and Mehdi Bâzargân, the first modernist prime minister of Ayatollâ Khomeini.

Montgomery , Science in translation (ref. 44); Rosenthal Franz , The classical heritage in Islam (London, 1975).

Shamsod-din Mohammad b. Mahmud-e Amoli, Nafâyes ol-fonun fi ‘arâyesol-’ oyun (ref. 43).

Zobdatol-Qavânin al 'Alâj, 1228/1813, University of California at Los Angeles, MS 21.

For the association between Islamic cosmology, the Aristotelian theory of four elements (fire, water, earth and air) and Ptolemy's conception of concentric spheres, see Nasr Seyyed Hossein , An introduction to Islamic cosmological doctrines (Cambridge, 1964). Aristotle's influence was not only through classic scholars such as Avicenna. He was also studied in Greek, as in the case of Asghar Hosein b. Gholâm Ghowth who translated into Persian in 1801 a treatise of Aristotle in question and answer form, entitled Resâleh-ye mâbâl, from a comparative study of an original book in Greek and its Arabic translation (see manuscript of the Wellcome Library, WMS. Per. 121 (E)).

Gallagher Nancy E. , Medicine and power in Tunisia, 1780–1900 (Cambridge, 1983); Bey Mahfuz Naguib , The history of medical education in Egypt (Cairo, 1935); Sonbol El Azhary Amira , “The creation of a medical profession in Egypt during the nineteenth century: A study in modernisation”, Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1981; Moulin Anne-Marie , “L'hygiène dans la ville: La médecine ottomane à l'heure pastorienne (1887–1908)” in Dumont P. et Georgeon F. (eds), Villes ottomanes à la fin de l'empire (Paris, 1991), 186–209; idem, “Révolutions médicales et révolutions politiques en Egypte (1865–1917)”, Revue de l'Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, lii (1989), 111–23.

Bey Mahfouz Naguib , op. cit. (ref. 60), 24.

Anonymous , Tebb-e jadid-e kimiyâ'i, transl. from an Arabic text written by Sâleh b. Nasrollâ al-halabi in 1669. Persian manuscript, St Petersburg, Library of the Oriental Institute, C 1612.

Khu'i 'Abdol-Sabur , Ta'limnâmeh yâ Resâleh-ye âbeleh kubi, lithograph (Tabriz, 1245/1829).

Mohammad Ali Fâni b. Mollâ Eskandar Shervâni, Kimiyâ'-e shafâ, 1252/1836, Persian manuscript, University of California at Los Angeles, MS 65.

Porter Roy , The greatest benefit to mankind: A medical history of humanity from Antiquity to the present (London, 1997), 210–11.

Collins E. Treacher , In the Kingdom of the Shah (London, 1896), 109; see also pp. 162, 276.

Astarâbâdi , op. cit. (ref. 41), fol. 3.

Râzi Mohammad Fakhrol-Atebbâ Kani , Meftâh ol-amân (Key of Safety), 1279/1862–63, Tehran, National Library, p. 3.

jush-e shirin or bicarbonate of sodium.

Cf. Safineh-ye Nuh (ref. 41), fol. 7.

Sajjâdi Sâdeq , “Drugs”, in Encyclopedia Iranica, vii, fasc. 5, p. 559.

Ibid., 560.

Hamedâni Mirzâ Ali Dr , Preface of the Persian translation of Grisolle's Traité des maladies nevreuses (amrâz-e asabâni = nervous diseases), lithograph (Tehran, 1297/1880), 4.

Prince Aliqoli-Khan E 'tezâdos-saltaneh (1819–81) was appointed head of the Dâr ol-fonun in 1858 and a year later nominated as minister of sciences. The first and the largest group of students (42) was sent to Paris under his auspices as soon as he became head of the Dâr ol-fonun. He took over responsibilty for the telegraph and the printing-house (châp-khâneh), and published several journals. Cf. Bâmdâd Mehdi , Sarh-e hâl-e rejâl-e Iran (Biography of Iranian politics (Tehran, 1335/1956), iii, 442–8.

Ketâb-e mostatâb-e falakos-sa'âdeh, lithograph, Tehran, 1862.

Ali-Khân , 'osul-e 'elm-efizik (Principles of physics), lithograph, Tehran, 1295/1878, Introduction.

Golinski Jan , Making natural knowledge: Constructivism and the history of science (Cambridge, 1998), 69.

Aqâ Mirzâ Mohammad Tehrâni (untitled treatise on cholera), lithograph, 1269/1853, Tehran, Library of the Parliament.

Anonymous Persian manuscript, undated, written in the early 1850s, Majles Library, Tehran, 81 pages.

Fahmy Khaled , “Women, medicine, and power in nineteenth-century Egypt”, in Remaking women, ed. by Aby-Lughod Lila (Princeton, 1998), 35–72, pp. 46–47.

Elgood , A medical history of Persia (ref. 45), 219–20.

Mohammad Hosein b. Mohammad Hâdi Aqili, Kholâsat al-Hekmat (Summary of medicine), written in 1782, lithograph edn (Bombay, 1261/1845), fol. 287.

Kani Râzi , Meftâh ol-amân (ref. 68).

Astarâbâdi , op. cit. (ref. 41), 6.

Ibid., 13.

Echo de Perse, Journal politique, littéraire et commercial, no. 3, Troisième année, 1 May 1887. (“La meilleure QUININE est la Quinine des trois cachets de Pellier, Delondre et Levaillant. Dépôt à Téhéran, avenue de Lalézar, chez Mr. Le Dr. Morel.”).

Astarâbâdi , op. cit. (ref. 41), 15–16.

Astarâbâdi , Safineh-ye nuh (ref. 41), fols. 6, 8.

Cf. Arjomand S. A. , The shadow of God and the hidden Imam: Religion, political order and societal change in Shiite Iran from the beginning to 1890 (Chicago, 1984).

On the growing political power of the Shiite clerics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries see Algar Hamid , Religion and the state in Iran: 1785–1906 (Berkeley, 1969); idem, “The oppositional role of the Ulama in twentieth-century Iran”, in Keddie N. R. (ed.), Scholars, saints and sufis (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972); Arjomand Said Amir , The turban for the crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (Oxford and New York, 1988).

Keddi Nikki , “The roots of the Ulama's power in modern Iran”, in Keddi (ed.), Scholars, saints and sufis.

Arjomand , The turban for the crown (ref. 90), 13.

Los Angeles Times, 29 December 2000, article of Robin Wright.

Reuters, Monday, 11 December 2000. The news was published first in several newspapers in Iran one week earlier. The parliament had approved organ transplantation in April 2000 but the law had to be endorsed by the Guardian Council before it could take effect. The Guardian Council (showrâ-ye negahbân), appointed by the “supreme guide”, is the most powerful, although unpopular, organization which oversees other constitutional bodies such as the parliament, president, etc.

After the anti-Pahlavi movement led to the establishment of theocratic power in Iran in 1979, a series of conferences was organized where the benefits of the ‘forgotten’ traditional medicine were discussed and the proceedings were published as majmu'eh ye maqâlât-e tebb-e sonnati dar Iran (Collection of articles on traditional medicine in Iran) in 1982. Dr Velâyati, a paediatrician and the minister of foreign affairs, assisted by historians of medicine such as Najmâbâdi, edited some sources of traditional medicine such as Khoffeh-ye Alâ'i (Boot of Alâ'i), a summary of the Zakhira-ye Khârazmshâhi of Gorgâni.