Essay Review: Islam and Medicine: Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition: Change and Identity

See, for example, Hamarneh Sami K. , Health sciences in early Islam: Collected papers, ed. by Anees M. A. (Blanco, Texas, 1983).

See Wensinck A. J. , A handbook of early Muhammadan tradition (Leiden, 1927), s.v. “medicine”. For the criticism of the hadīth literature in general, see Juynboll G. H. A. , Muslim tradition: Studies in chronology, provenance and authorship of early “hadīth” (Cambridge, 1983).

Rahman's reluctance to concede the large magical element in Islamic medicine may be seen especially in his discussion of mujarrabāt or “tested treatments” (pp. 74–75). A study of this minor medical genre would show that Manfred Ullmann is correct in his assessment that they contain a large magical component: Die Medizin im Islam in Handbuch der Orientalistik, part 1, supp. 6, i (Leiden/Cologne, 1970), 311–12. Incidentally, there appears to be a typographical error at the top of p. 74 and at the bottom, read Willis, not Willi.

adh-Dhahabī , At-Tibb an-nabawī (Cairo, 1961); see also Ullmann , Die Medizin im Islam, 186–7.

Elgood Cyril , “Tibb-ul-Nabbi or Medicine of the Prophet. Being a translation of two works of the same name, …”, Osiris, xiv (1962), 33–192; the two authors are as-Suyūtī and al-Chaghayni.

Elgood Cyril , “The medicine of the Prophet”, Medical history, xi (1962), 146–53. Also not cited is Bürgel's J. C. fine study, “Secular and religious features of medieval Arabic medicine”, in Asian medical systems: A comparative study, ed. by Leslie Charles (Berkeley, 1976), 44–62.

On this issue, two Qur'ānic passages (24.61, 48.17) appear to be relevant; they say that no guilt or fault should be attached to human infirmity or sickness. The issue, however, is not discussed by Rahman.

Orientalists have avoided, even denied, the issue of theodicy in Islam; see, however, the recent work by Ormsby Eric L. , Theodicy in Islamic thought (Princeton, 1984).

E.g. Khan Muhammad S. , Islamic medicine (London, 1986).

al-Jawzīya Ibn Qayyim , At-Tibb an-nabawī (Cairo, 1398/1978), 73. “The relationship of the medicine of the doctors is to it [Prophet medicine] as the relationship of the medicine of roadside practitioners [turuqīya] and old women to their [the doctors'] medicine.” Rahman translates (p. 43) this statement of Ibn Qayyim in a slightly different sense than I have rendered it, but it is not entirely clear what Ibn Qayyim meant by “the medicine of roadside practitioners and old women” or, as Rahman translates it, “soothsayers' medicine”. (See also Elgood's version of the passage in his “The medicine of the Prophet”, 149.) Ibn Qayyim presumably meant non-Islamic but indigenous methods of healing, including herbal treatments, traditional remedies and various forms of magic; it certainly does not mean, as Rahman implies, that it was the source of all magically oriented medicine. If “magic” means the coercion of supernatural powers for a specific goal, such as healing, Prophetic medicine was, in large measure, magical as well. Fortunately, an English translation of Ibn Qayyim's At-Tibb an-nabawī has been prepared by Penelope Johnstone and will be published shortly.

The issues are well presented by Franz Rosenthal in two of his articles: “The defense of medicine in the medieval Muslim world”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xliii (1969), 519–32, and “The physician in medieval Muslim society”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lii (1978), 475–91. For further discussion and bibliographical references, see Dols Michael , Medieval Islamic medicine (Berkeley, 1984), 40.

See Dols Michael , “The origins of the Islamic hospital: Myth and reality”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lxi (1987), 367–90.

See the supplement to Habīb Ibn , Tadhkirat an-nabīh fī ayyām al-mansūr wa banīh , ed. by Amīn M. M. (Cairo, 1976–82), i, 367. For medicine in the Mamlūk period, see Behrens-Abouseif Doris , Fath Allāh and Abū Zakariyya: Physicians under the Mamluks , in Supplément aux annales Islamologiques, cahier no. 10 (Cairo, 1987). Unfortunately, on p. 70, Rahman translates a passage from Ahmad ‘Isās’ History of hospitals in Islam (Ta'rīkh al-bīmāristānīt fī l-Islām (Damascus, 1939), pp. 151–2) that is doubly mistaken. The regulation for the Man⊡ūrī Hospital is not from the endowment deed of 685/1286, as is alleged, but from the “notice” (i'lām) of the appointment of 'Abd ar-Rahman Katkhudā as director of the hospital in 1174/1760–61. Secondly, the text does not say that all people would be treated irrespectively of religion; a few lines above, in fact, the text states clearly that the hospital was for Muslims only.

See the discussion of this matter in Dols , Medieval Islamic medicine, 32.

Dols Michael , “Insanity in Byzantine and Islamic medicine”, in Symposium on Byzantine medicine, ed. by Scarborough John (Dumbarton Oaks Papers, no. 38; Washington, D.C., 1984), 136–7.

See ibid., 136, n. 7.