Review of Seema Alevi, Islam and Healing, Loss and
Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition
(1600-1900), 2008, in International Journal of
asianStudies, 2010, 7, 1, 126-127

Anne Marie Moulin

► To cite this version:

Anne Marie Moulin. Review of Seema Alevi, Islam and Healing, Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition (1600-1900), 2008, in International Journal of AsianStudies, 2010, 7, 1, 126-127. International Journal of Asian Studies, 2010, 7 (1), pp.126-127. hal-05511602

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Review of

Seema Alevi, *Islam and Healing, Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical tradition, 1600-1900* (First edition, Permanent Black, Ranikhet, India, 2007) Houndmills, Hampshire, Palgrave, Macmillan 2008, 384 pages, price ??

For the *International Journal of Asian Studies*, n. 7 (1) 126-127, 2010

The title defines well the author's target. Spanning three centuries of medical history, from the Moghol period to the early twentieth century, Seema Alevi depicts the trajectory of the so-called Unani medicine (means Greek in Urdu, from the Arabic *Yunāni*). Interestingly, the word *unani* does not figure in the title. The author, who is professor at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, intends to show that, even in the context of British colonization, the course of Unani medicine was inspired and shaped by local determinants and not European ones. Seema Alevi has been influenced in this respect by the claims of the Subaltern and Post-Colonial Studies, and focuses on autochthonous knowledge and practices.

Unani medicine in the 18 and 19th centuries was built up in India with elements selected in a mass of knowledge derived from the Arab and Greek medical works. This tradition was introduced by Persian *hakims* who fled from Persia torn by violence in the Safavid era and established at the court of Moghol rulers. It was considerably enriched by the plentiful Indian pharmacopeia. The 300 pages of the book are dedicated to the history of a insufficiently explored tradition, which suggests its value as a documentary source and a forum for discussion.

Seema Alevi tells passingly, with the rise of the colonial enterprise of the Company, the foundation of the Calcutta Medical College in 1835, where the British tried to train local doctors or health officers and encourage hybrid learning. But she gives more importance to the doings of the old aristocratic families, who patronized the revival of Unani medicine. She describes how the powerful Azizi clan, established at Lucknow, founded the *Takmil Tibbi* College and impulsed
a novel form of Unani medicine, which relied on canonic texts from the past but also « cannibalized », to use the author's own words, the useful parts of British medicine, namely anatomy and surgery.

The author draws her material from the archives of the British administration, the local press written in urdu and family documents. The most famous newspaper in urdu, founded in 1864 and subsidized by the local rulers, became a tribune for planning and discussing the transformation and the future of the Unani tradition. The detailed analysis of its content reveals the collaboration between the British and the Moslem elites and the collusion of interests between Western pharmaceutical companies and Indian retailers. Yet, S Alevi claims that the local Unani pharmacopoeia fitted better the local pathology, with an exception for quinine, which provided the specific remedy for fevers (before the identification of Plasmodium as the agent of malaria in 1883). She shows how Unani medicine is rooted in the history and geography of Hindustan and adjusted to local needs and demands, while retaining something of the universal ethos of Islam. Her saga of Unani medicine discloses the clash between a professional caste struggling to retain its position, and newcomers trying to occupy the niche of care providers for the poorest. The British, like many nations at the time, made mitigated attempts to regulate the practices and impose certification, which crossed the efforts of hakim families to control traditional practices.

The writing is remarkably bland and in a sense neutral, devoid of strong anti-colonial rhetoric. Surprisingly, Seema Alevi does not mention the event, which fractured the colonial period, the Sepoys' Rebellion, which caused the Moghol Emperor Behadduran to be deposed and tried. The war changed the rules of the political game, the British tending to favour the Hindus over the Moslems. She is the author of *The Sepoys and the Company. Tradition and Transition in northern India 1770-1830*, situated ahead of the great riot. But it is difficult to believe that in the field of medicine, nothing resulted from the collapse of the Moghol power.

In this history dedicated to Unani medicine, it seems to me that some important clues are overlooked. Although the author claims that the Hindus figured among the patients going to the hakims, they are very much missing in the picture. How to reconcile the idea of
an Unani medicine detaining cure for all natives living under the Indian climate with the respect of the *akhlaq*, the etiquette of behaviour and the diet, which, essential for the preservation and the restoration of health, obviously differed according to religion and caste? Many questions of this kind could have received more ample attention, at the expense of some lengthy and sometimes redundant developments on the hakims' written production. The relationship between Unani medicine and other kinds of local traditions is only clearly addressed in the last chapter, where two leaders of Unani medicine, Hakim Abd ul Aziz at Lucknow and Ajmal khan in Delhi opposed themselves on the point of including some knowledge of the Ayyurveda. It is regrettable that the author did not confront her vision of what is essential to Unani medicine with Guy Attewell's own interpretation, *Unani Tibb. Plural Healing in late colonial India*, published in 2007.

The chapters contain the texts of some recipes (*nuskhas*) which give us glimpses on the patients' daily lives. Despite the fact that S Alevi adheres to the definition of medicine as healing, at the end of the book, we do not know much about the way patients were actually treated and sometimes cured. It is mentioned that some enlightened hakims embarked on a near to experimental program of testing local drugs, but S Alevi does not go very far in that direction. Among others, one case is fascinating and would have provided a welcome opportunity for the confrontation between doctors of various obediences. It is the description of the plague epidemic in 1903, where hakims cured pestiferous patients by a British technique of extirpating the lymph nodes (the « bubocs »). The positive output, a 90 % rate of recoveries!, was attributed to the adoption of this western technique by the hakims. In such places, Seema Alevi's account appears too brief and superficial.

In fact, the medical knowledge is less discussed for its therapeutic and practical value than for its cultural and political signification. In that sense, this story of the Unani medicine is a fascinating introduction to the making of the Indian nation. This is both the strength and the weakness of the book that medical knowledge is ultimately treated as a metaphor for power and identity. We are led to admit that there is no such thing as universal medicine, but hear little about how people benefit from a pluralist system, while we clearly perceive how the division between different schools has reflected the rise
of nationalism and communautarism. From this vantage point, there are
very interesting pages about the variety of terms indicating sense of
affiliation and community: *mulk*, *qawm*, *watan*, imperfectly translated by
country, tribe and homeland, alerts the reader to the semantic nuances of
the Arabic-rooted urdu vocabulary (the lexicon provided at the end is
very useful but unfortunately does not mention all the words met in the
book).

What imparts emotion to S Alevi's scholarly erudition, is
her obvious commitment to the fate of this scion of ancient medicine, so
uniquely adapted in her eyes to the local people. Very informative but
sometimes lacking a critical approach and a more comprehensive view
of the Indian history, the book is an important contribution to the
understanding of Unani medicine and the multiple system of care in
India and also in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Anne Marie Moulin, M.D., Ph. D
Director of research, CNRS-REHSEIS-University of Paris 7
of nationalism and communautarism. From this vantage point, there are
very interesting pages about the variety of terms indicating sense of
affiliation and community: *mulk*, *qawm*, *watan*, imperfectly translated by
country, tribe and homeland, alerts the reader to the semantic nuances of
the Arabic-rooted urdu vocabulary (the lexicon provided at the end is
very useful but unfortunately does not mention all the words met in the
book).

What imparts emotion to S Alevi's scholarly erudition, is
her obvious commitment to the fate of this scion of ancient medicine, so
uniquely adapted in her eyes to the local people. Very informative but
sometimes lacking a critical approach and a more comprehensive view
of the Indian history, the book is an important contribution to the
understanding of Unani medicine and the multiple system of care in
India and also in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Anne Marie Moulin, M.D., Ph. D
Director of research, CNRS-REHSEIS-University of Paris 7