# PREFACE

IN the course of the last ten years there have been conferred upon me two public honours which have given me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction, my election in 1911 as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and the presentation, on the occasion of my fifty-ninth birthday in February, 1921, of a complimentary address (accompanied by very beautiful presents) signed by a number of representative Persians, expressing their appreciation of the services which, they were kind enough to say, I had rendered to their language and literature.

I hope that this little book may be regarded, not as a discharge, but as an acknowledgment, of this double debt. In it I have sought on the one hand to indicate the part played by the scholars and physicians of Islám, and especially of Persia, in the transmission of medical science through the dark ages from the decline of the ancient to the rise of the modern learning; and on the other to suggest to lovers of Arabic and Persian literature in the wider sense that hitherto they have perhaps allowed the poets and euphuists to occupy a disproportionate amount of their attention, to the exclusion of the scientific *Weltanschauung* which, to a greater degree in the medieval East than in the modern West, forms the background of these lighter, though more artistic, efforts. Indeed, as I have attempted to show in these

vi

Preface

pages¹, that great Persian poem the *Mathnawí* of Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí will be better appreciated by one who is conversant with the medical literature of the period.

Before I began to prepare the FitzPatrick lectures now offered to the public I consulted Sir Clifford Allbutt, the Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Cambridge, as to the best books on the history of that science which the Prophet Muhammad, in a tradition familiar to all Muslims, is said to have linked in importance with Theology². Of the numerous works which Sir Clifford Allbutt indicated, and, in many cases, lent to me for preliminary study, I have derived more profit from none than from Professor Max Neuburger's excellent *Geschichte der Medizin* (Stuttgart, 1908). Although the section of this work dealing with Arabian Medicine comprises only 86 pages³, it is extraordinarily rich in facts and accurate in details, and supplies an outline of the subject which is susceptible of amplification but not of correction.

I have thought it better to publish these four lectures in the form in which they were originally delivered than to recast them in a fresh mould, but the proofs have been read by several of my friends and colleagues, namely Dr F. H. H. Guillemard, M.D., Dr E. H. Minns, Litt.D.,

¹ See pp. 87–88 *infra*.

² “Science is twofold: Theology and Medicine.”
الْعِلْمُ عِلْمَانِ عِلْمُ الْأَدْيَانِ وَ عِلْمُ الْأَبْدَانِ

³ Vol. I, part ii, pp. 142–228 = pp. 346–394 of vol. i of Ernest Playfair's English translation (London, 1910).

Preface

vii

Mírzá Muḥammad Khán of Qazwín, and Muḥammad Iqbál, to all of whom I am indebted for many valuable corrections and suggestions. I am also deeply indebted to Professor A. A. Bevan and the Rev. Professor D. S. Margoliouth for their help in establishing the text and emending the translation of the clinical case recorded by ar-Rází which will be found on pp. 51–3 *infra*.

It has afforded me particular pleasure to be allowed to dedicate this little volume explicitly to Sir Norman Moore, as representing that fine tradition of learning, acumen and humanity proper in all countries and ages to the great and noble profession of Medicine, with which living tradition, to my infinite advantage, I was brought in contact in my student days both here at Cambridge and in St Bartholomew’s Hospital; and implicitly to those other great teachers in these two famous schools of medical learning whose methods of investigation and exposition I have endeavoured to apply in other fields of knowledge.

EDWARD G. BROWNE.

*April* 16, 1921.

# CONTENTS

## THE RIVAL PHYSICIANS

Frontispiece

(Photo. by Mr R. B. Fleming from the British Museum MS. Or. 2265, f. 26b.)

### LECTURE I

PAGE I

Meaning of the term “Arabian Medicine”—Periods of Arabian and Islamic history—The transmission of Greek learning—Syrian and Persian contributions—The Latino-Barbari—Aptitude of Arabic for scientific purposes.

### LECTURE II

33

Evolution of scientific terminology in Arabic—Was dissection practised by the Muslims?—Four early Persian medical writers: (1) ‘Alī ibn Rabban; (2) Abú Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā ar-Rāzī; (3) ‘Alī ibnu’l-‘Abbās al-Majūsī; (4) Abú ‘Alī Husayn ibn Sīnā (Avicenna).

### LECTURE III

65

Recapitulation—Arabian popular Medicine—The translators from Arabic into Latin—Practice of Medicine in the time of the Crusades—Anecdotes of notable cures in Arabic and Persian literature—Psychotherapeusis—Love and Melancholia—Persian medical works—Introduction of European Medicine into Muslim lands.

### LECTURE IV

97

Contributions of the Moors of Spain—The School of Toledo—Persian medical literature from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries—Biographical works of the thirteenth century—Muslim hospitals—Letters of “Rashid the Physician” —Outlines of Muslim cosmogony, physical science and physiology—Conclusion.

## INDEX

127

LECTURE I

THE extent of my subject and the limitations of the time at my disposal forbid me, even were it otherwise desirable, to introduce into these lectures any unessential or irrelevant matter. Yet I cannot lose this, the first opportunity accorded to me since my election as a Fellow of this College, of expressing publicly my deep sense of gratitude for an honour as highly appreciated as unexpected. I am well aware that this honour was conferred on me on the ground (the only ground on which it could have been conferred in my case) that, having regard to the position occupied by Arabian Medicine in the history of our profession, it was desirable that there should be amongst the Fellows of the College one who could study that system at first hand. There is a proverbial saying amongst the Arabs when the time comes when the services of a person or thing provided for a particular contingency are at last actually required—

> “I have not stored thee up, O my tear, save for my time of distress”; and when I was invited to deliver the FitzPatrick lectures this year, I felt that this proverb was applicable, and that, even though I felt myself unworthy of this fresh honour on the part of the College, it was impossible to decline, especially in view of the expressed wish of the President of the College, Sir Norman Moore, to whose inspiring teaching in my far-off student days I owe a greater debt of gratitude than I can adequately express. I can only hope that at the conclusion of my lectures you may not apply to me another proverbial saying of the Arabs:

B. A. M.

I

2

Arabian Medicine. I

—"At the first bout his quarter-staff was broken." —مِنْ أَوَّلِ غَزَوَاتِهِ أَنْكَسَرَتْ عَصَاتُهُ

When we speak of "Arabian Science" or "Arabian Medicine" we mean that body of scientific or medical doctrine which is enshrined in books written in the Arabic language, but which is for the most part Greek in its origin, though with Indian, Persian and Syrian accretions, and only in a very small degree the product of the Arabian mind. Its importance, as has long been recognized, lies not in its originality, but in the fact that in the long interval which separated the decay of Greek learning from the Renascence it represented the most faithful tradition of ancient Wisdom, and was during the Dark Ages the principal source from which Europe derived such philosophical and scientific ideas as she possessed. The translation of the Greek books into Arabic, either directly or through intermediate Syriac versions, was effected for the most part under the en-lightened patronage of the early 'Abbásid Caliphs at Baghdad between the middle of the eighth and ninth centuries of our era by skilful and painstaking scholars who were for the most part neither Arabs nor even Muhammadans, but Syrians, Hebrews or Persians of the Christian, Jewish or Magian faith. Some four or five centuries later European seekers after knowledge, cut off from the original Greek sources, betook themselves with ever increasing enthusiasm to this Arabian presentation of the ancient learning, and rehabilitated it in a Latin dress; and for the first century after the discovery of the art of printing the Latin renderings of Arabic philosophical, scientific and medical works constituted a considerable proportion of the output of the European Press; until the revival of a direct knowledge of the

Recent Revival of Interest

3

Greek originals in the first place, and the inauguration
of a fresh, fruitful and first-hand investigation of natural
phenomena in the second, robbed them to a great ex-
tent of their prestige and their utility, and changed the
excessive veneration in which they had hitherto been
held into an equally exaggerated contempt.

In recent years, however, when the interest and
importance of what may be called the Embryology of
Science has obtained recognition, the Arabian, together
with other ancient and obsolete systems of Medicine,
has attracted increasing attention, has formed the sub-
ject of much admirable and ingenious research, and has
already produced a fairly copious literature. The chief
Arabic biographical and bibliographical sources, such as
the Fihrist or "Index" (377/987), al-Qifti's History of the
Philosophers (c. 624/1227), Ibn Abi Uṣaybi'a's Classes
of Physicians (640/1242), the great bibliography of Hājji
Khalifa (+1068/1658) and the like, have been made
available in excellent editions, while their most essential
contents have been summarized by Wenrich, Wüsten-
feld, Leclerc, Brockelmann and others; the general
character and relations of Arabian Medicine have been
concisely yet adequately described by Neuburger, Pagel,
Withington and Garrison, to name only a few of the
more recent writers on the history of Medicine; while
amongst more specialized investigations, to mention one
branch only of the subject, the admirable works of Dr
P. de Koning and Dr Max Simon have accurately de-
termined the anatomical terminology of the Arabs and
its equivalence with that of the Greek anatomists. For
the pathological terminology much more remains to be
done, and I have been greatly hampered in my reading
of Arabic medical books by the difficulty of determining
the exact scientific signification of many words used in

I—2

4

Arabian Medicine. I

the ordinary literary language in a looser and less precise sense than that which they evidently bear in the technical works in question. Nor is much help to be derived from the medieval translations of the "Latino-Barbari," who too often simply preserve in a distorted form the Arabic term which they pretend to translate. Thus the first section of the first discourse of the first part of the third book of Avicenna's great *Qánún* is entitled in the Latin Version *Sermo universalis de Sodâ*, but who, not having the original before him, could divine that *soda* stands for the Arabic *صداع*, the ordinary Arabic word for a headache, being the regularly formed "noun of pain" from the verb *صدع* "to split"?

Now the history of Arabian Medicine can only be studied in connection with the general history of Islám, which, as you all know, first began to assume political significance in A.D. 622. In that year Muḥammad, whose real miracle was that he inspired the warring tribes of Arabia with a common religious and social ideal, welded them into one people, sent them forth to conquer half the then known world, and founded an Empire destined to rival and replace those of Caesar and Chosroes, transferred the scene of his activities from Mecca to al-Madína. This event marks the beginning of the Muhammadan era known as the *hijra* or "Flight," from which 1338 lunar years have now elapsed. About the middle of this period, viz. in the seventh century of the Flight and the thirteenth of our era, Arabian or, more correctly speaking, Muhammadan Civilization suffered through the Mongol or Tartar invasion an injury from which it never recovered, and which destroyed for ever the Caliphate, the nominal unity of the Arabian Empire, and the pre-eminence of

*The Golden Age* (A.D. 750–850)

5

Baghdád as a centre of learning. Even before this,
however, partly in consequence of the triumph of the
narrower and more orthodox doctrines of the Ash'arí
over the more liberal Mu'tazila school of theology,
partly in consequence of the gradual displacement of
Arabian and Persian by Turkish influences in the
political world, science, and particularly philosophy
(which was so closely connected with medicine that
the title *Hakím* was, and still is, indifferently applied
alike to the metaphysician and the physician), had ceased
to be cultivated with the same enthusiasm and assiduity
which had prevailed in “the Golden Prime of good
Hárúnu’r-Rashíd” and his immediate predecessors and
successors. This Golden Age of Arabian learning cul-
minated in the century between A.D. 750 and 850, the
century succeeding the establishment of the ‘Abbásid
Caliphate with its metropolis at Baghdad. Of the ten
Caliphs who reigned during this period the second,
al-Manṣúr, and the seventh, al-Ma’mún (whose mother
and wife were both Persians, and in whose reign Persian
influences, already powerful, reached their culminating
point), were conspicuous for their intellectual curiosity
and for their love and generous patronage of learning,
and for a broad tolerance which scandalized the orthodox
and led one of them to change the Caliph’s title of
“Commander of the Faithful” (*Amíru’l-Mú’minín*) into
that of “Commander of the Unbelievers” (*Amíru’l-
Káfirín*)¹. To the ancient learning, especially that of
the ancient Greeks, they were enthusiastically attached;
by purchase, conquest or exchange they possessed them-
selves of countless precious manuscripts, Greek and
other, which they stored in the Royal Library or
*Baytu’l-Hikmat* (“House of Wisdom”) and caused to be

¹ Al-Ya‘qúbí, ed. Houtsma, p. 546.

6

Arabian Medicine. I

translated, by the most competent scholars they could
attract to their court, into Arabic, either directly from
the Greek, or through the intermediary of the Syriac
language. In the *Fihrist* or Index (i.e. of Sciences), an
Arabic work composed in A.D. 987, more than a century
after what I have spoken of as the "Golden Age," we
have at once a mirror of the learning of that time, and
an indicator of the appalling losses which it afterwards
sustained, for of the books there enumerated it would
hardly be an exaggeration to say that not one in a
thousand now exists even in the most fragmentary form.
The hateful Mongols—"that detestable nation of Satan,"
as old Matthew Paris (writing in A.D. 1240) calls them,
"who poured forth like devils from Tartarus so that they
are rightly called 'Tartars'"—did their work of de-
vastation only too thoroughly, and the Muhammadan
culture which survived the sack of Baghdad and the ex-
tinction of the Caliphate in A.D. 1258 was but a shadow
of that which preceded it.

I have used the term "Muhammadan Civilization,"
which, for reasons to be given shortly, I prefer to
"Arabian." As Latin was the learned language of me-
dieval Europe, so was (and to some extent is) Arabic
the learned language of the whole Muhammadan world.
There is no objection to our talking of "Arabian Science"
or "Arabian Medicine" so long as we never lose sight
of the fact that this simply means the body of scientific
or medical doctrine set forth in the Arabic language, for
it is not until the eleventh century of our era that we
begin to meet with what may be called a vernacular
scientific literature in Muhammadan lands, a litera-
ture typified by such works as al-Bīrūnī's *Tafhīm* on
astronomy (eleventh century) and the *Dhakhira* or

Arabs not apt for Research

7

"Thesaurus" of Medicine composed for the King of Khwárazm or Khiva in the twelfth century.

Now this scientific literature in the Arabic language was for the most part produced by Persians, Syrians, Jews, and in a lesser degree by Greeks, but only to a very small extent by genuine Arabs. Ibn Khaldún, who composed his celebrated *Prolegomena to the Study of History*—one of the most remarkable books in Arabic—about A.D. 1400, judges his countrymen very harshly. He declares that every country conquered by them is soon ruined¹, that they are incapable of evolving a stable and orderly system of government², that of all people in the world they are the least capable of ruling a kingdom³, and that of all people in the world they have the least aptitude for the arts⁴. Goldziher, one of the profoundest Arabic scholars of our time and himself a Jew, rightly says that Lagarde goes too far when he asserts that "of the Muhammadans who have achieved anything in science not one was a Semite"; yet he himself is constrained to admit that even in the religious sciences (exegesis of the *Qur'an*, tradition, jurisprudence, and the like) "the Arabian element lagged far behind the non-Arabian⁵." Much more evidence of this might be adduced, but I will content myself with one instance (hitherto, I believe, unnoticed in Europe) of the mistrust with which Arab practitioners of medicine were regarded even by their own people. The anecdote in question is related by that most learned but discursive writer al-Jáḥiẓ (so called on account of his prominent eyes) in his "Book of Misers" (*Kitābu'l-Bukhalā*⁶) and concerns an Arabian physician named

¹ De Slane's transl., i, p. 310.

² *Ibid.*, ii, p. 314.

³ See my *Lit. Hist. of Persia*, i, p. 260.

⁴ Ed. Van Vloten, pp. 109-110.

⁵ *Ibid.*, i, p. 311.

⁶ *Ibid.*, ii, p. 365.

8

Arabian Medicine. I

Asad ibn Jání, who, even in a year of pestilence, and in spite of his recognized learning, skill and diligence, had but few patients. Being asked the reason of this by one of his acquaintances he replied: "In the first place I am a Muslim, and before I studied medicine, nay, before ever I was created, the people held the view that Muslims are not successful physicians. Further my name is Asad, and it should have been Ṣalíbá, Mará’il, Yuhanná or Bírá [i.e. a Syriac or Aramaic name]; and my kunya is Abu’l-Ḥárith, and it should have been Abú ‘Ísá, Abú Zakariyyá or Abú Ibráhím [i.e. Christian or Jewish instead of Muhammadan]; and I wear a cloak of white cotton, and it should have been of black silk; and my speech is Arabic, and it should have been the speech of the people of Jundí-Shápúr" [in S.W. Persia].

The Arabs, whose scepticism was not confined to matters of religion, avenged themselves to some extent by disparaging verses about doctors, such as the following on the death of Yuhanná ibn Másawayhi (the Mesues of the medieval writers) in A.D. 857:

إِنَّ الطَّبِيبَ بِطَبِبه و دوائه، لا يستطيع دفاعَ أمْرِ قد أتى،
ما للطبيب يموت بالدَّاء الَّذِي، قد كان يُبْرِئُ منه فيما قد مضى،
مات المداوى و المداوى و الَّذِي، جلب الدواء و باعه و مَنِ أشترى

"Verily the physician, with his physic and his drugs,
Cannot avert a summons that hath come.
What ails the physician that he dies of the disease
Which he used to cure in time gone by?
There died alike he who administered the drug, and he who took the drug,
And he who imported and sold the drug, and he who bought it."

Similar in purport are the following verses from the
popular romance of ‘Antara, the old Bedouin hero :

Earlier Periods of Arabian History

9

يقول لك الطبيب دواك عندى،
اذا ما جسّ زندك و الذراعا،
و لو علم الطبيب دوآء،
يَرْدُ الموت ما قاسى النزاعا،

"*The physician says to thee, 'I can cure thee,'*
*When he feels thy wrist and thy arm;*
*But did the physician know a cure for disease*
*Which would ward off death, he would not himself suffer the death*
*agony."*

Now in considering the genesis and development
of the so-called Arabian Medicine, of which, though the
main outlines are clearly determined, many details
remain to be filled in, we may most conveniently begin
by enquiring what was the state of medical knowledge,
or ignorance, amongst the ancient Arabs before the
driving force of Islám destroyed their secular isolation,
sent them out to conquer half the then known world,
and brought this primitive but quick-witted people into
close contact with the ancient civilization of the Greeks,
Persians, Egyptians, Indians and others. We have to
distinguish three periods antecedent to what I have called
the Golden Age, viz.:

(1) The *Fáhiliyyat*, or Pagan Period, preceding the
rise and speedy triumph of Islám, which was fully
accomplished by the middle of the seventh century of
our era.

(2) The theocratic period of the Prophet and his
immediate successors, the Four Orthodox Caliphs, which
endured in all, from the *hijra* or “Flight” to the
assassination of ‘Alí, less than forty years (A.D. 622–
661) and which had its centre at al-Madína, the ancient
Yathrib (‘Iáθριππα).

(3) The period of the Umayyad Caliphs, whose
immense Empire stretched from Spain to Samarqand,
and whose court at Damascus speedily began to show

10

Arabian Medicine. I

a luxury and wealth hitherto utterly undreamed of by
the Arabs.

For our present purpose it is hardly necessary to
consider separately the first and second of these three
periods, those namely which preceded and immediately
followed the rise of Islám, and which, however widely
they differed in their theological, ethical and political
aspects, were, as regards scientific knowledge, almost
on the same level. The life of the old pagan Arabs was
rough and primitive in the highest degree—very much
what the life of the Bedouin of Inner Arabia remains to
this day;—the different tribes were constantly engaged
in savage wars fomented by interminable vendettas;
only the strong and resourceful could hold their own,
and for the weak and sick there was little chance of
survival. On the other hand they were intelligent, re-
sourceful, courageous, hardy, chivalrous in many respects,
very observant of all natural phenomena which came
within the range of their observation, and possessed of
a language of great wealth and virility of which they
were inordinately proud, so that to this day, when they
still praise God "who created the Arabic language the
best of all languages," the poems of that far-off time,
describing their raids, their battles, their venturous
journeys and their love affairs, remain the standard and
model of the chastest and most classical Arabic. Most
of these warring tribes acknowledged no authority save
that of their own chiefs and princes; only on the borders
of the Persian and Roman Empires respectively, in the
little kingdoms of Híra and Ghassán, did the elements
of civilization and science exist.

The first Arab doctor mentioned by those careful
biographers of philosophers and physicians, al-Qiftí and
Ibn Abí Uşaybi'a, is al-Hárith ibn Kalada, an elder

Al-Ḥárith ibn Kalada

II

contemporary of the Prophet Muḥammad, who had
completed his studies at the great Persian medical school
of Jundí-Shápúr, and who had the honour of being con-
sulted on at least one occasion by the great Persian
King Khusraw Anúsharwán (the Kisrá of the Arabs and
Chosroes of the Greeks) who harboured and protected
the Neo-Platonist philosophers driven into exile by the
intolerance of the Emperor Justinian. An account of
this interview, authentic or otherwise, fills a couple of
closely-printed pages of Arabic in Ibn Abí Uṣaybi'a's
*Classes of Physicians*, and the substance of it is given
by Dr Lucien Leclerc in his *Histoire de la Médecine
Arabe*. It consists almost entirely of general hygienic
principles, sound enough as far as they go, but of little
technical interest. A certain tragic interest attaches
to Naḍr, the son of this al-Ḥárith¹, who like his
father seems to have had some skill in medicine and
a Persian education. This led him to mock at the
biblical anecdotes contained in the *Qur'án*, these being,
he did not hesitate to say, much less entertaining and
instructive than the old Persian legends about Rustam
and Isfandiyár, with which he would distract the
attention and divert the interest of the Prophet's
audience. Muḥammad never forgave him for this, and
when he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Badr—the
first notable victory of the Muslims over the un-
believers—he caused him to be put to death.

Of the Prophet's own ideas about medicine and

¹ My learned friend Mírzá Muḥammad of Qazwín, after reading these pages, has proved to me by many arguments and citations that Naḍr was not, as Ibn Abí Uṣaybi'a asserts, a son of al-Ḥárith ibn Kalada, the physician, of the tribe of Thaqíf, but of al-Ḥárith ibn 'Alqama ibn Kalada, a totally different person, though contemporary.

I2

Arabian Medicine. I

hygiene (partly derived, very likely, from the above-
mentioned al-Ḥárith) we can form a fairly accurate idea
from the very full and carefully authenticated body of
traditions of his sayings and doings which, after the
Qur'án, forms the most authoritative basis of Muham-
madan doctrine. These traditions, finally collected and
arranged during the ninth and tenth centuries of our
era, are grouped according to subjects, each subject
constituting a "book" (kitáb) and each tradition a
"chapter" (báb). If we take the Ṣahíh of al-Bukhárí,
the most celebrated of these collections, we find at the
beginning of the fourth volume two books dealing with
medicine and the sick, containing in all 80 chapters.
This looks promising; but when we come to examine
them more closely we find that only a small proportion
deal with medicine, surgery or therapeutics as we
understand them, and that the majority are concerned
with such matters as the visitation, encouragement and
spiritual consolation of the sick, the evil eye, magic,
talismans, amulets and protective prayers and formulae.
Although the Prophet declares that for every malady
wherewith God afflicts mankind He has appointed a
suitable remedy, he subsequently limits the principal
methods of treatment to three, the administration of
honey, cupping, and the actual cautery, and he re-
commends his followers to avoid or make sparing use of
the latter. Camel's milk, fennel-flower (Nigella sativa),
aloes, antimony (for ophthalmia), manna, and, as a
styptic, the ashes of burnt matting, are amongst the
other therapeutical agents mentioned. The diseases
referred to include headache and migraine, ophthalmia,
leprosy, pleurisy, pestilence and fever, which is charac-
terized as "an exhalation of Hell." The Prophet advises
his followers not to visit a country where pestilence

The "Prophet's Medicine"

13

is raging, but not to flee from it if they find themselves
there. The scanty material furnished by these and other
traditions (for the *Qur'án*, apart from some mention of
wounds and a vague popular Embryology, contains
hardly any medical matter) has been more or less
systematized by later writers as what is termed *Tibbu'n-
Nabí*, or the "Prophet's Medicine," and I am informed
that a manual so entitled is still one of the first books
read by the student of the Old Medicine in India, along
with the abridgment of Avicenna's *Qánún* known as
the *Qánúncha*.

The ingenious Ibn Khaldún, whom we have already
had occasion to mention, speaks slightly¹ of this
“Prophetic Medicine” and of the indigenous Arab
Medicine which it summarized and of which it formed
part, but judiciously adds that we are not called upon
to conform to its rules, since “the Prophet’s mission
was to make known to us the prescriptions of the Divine
Law, and not to instruct us in Medicine and the common
practices of ordinary life.” *À propos* of this he reminds
us that on one occasion the Prophet endeavoured to
forbid the artificial fecundation of the date-palm, with
such disastrous results to the fruit-crop that he with-
drew his prohibition with the remark, “You know
better than I do what concerns your worldly interests.”
“One is then under no obligation,” continues our author,
“to believe that the medical prescriptions handed down
even in authentic traditions have been transmitted to
us as rules which we are bound to observe; nothing in
these traditions indicates that this is the case. It is
however true that if one likes to employ these remedies
with the object of earning the Divine Blessing, and if
one takes them with sincere faith, one may derive from

¹ De Slane's transl., iii, pp. 163-4.

14

Arabian Medicine. I

them great advantage, though they form no part of
Medicine properly so-called."

I hope I have now said enough to show how wide
was the difference between what passed for medical
knowledge amongst the early Arabs of the pagan,
prophetic and patriarchal periods, and the elaborate
system built up on a Hippocratic and Galenic basis at
Baghdád under the early ‘Abbásid Caliphs. The facts
here are certain and the data ample. More difficult is
the question how far this system of Medicine was
evolved under the Umayyad Caliphs in the intermediate
period which lay between the middle of the seventh and
the middle of the eighth centuries of the Christian era.
These Umayyads, though, indeed, purely Arab, were by
this time accustomed to the settled life and the amenities
of civilization, and already far removed from the
conquerors of Ctesiphon, the Sásánian capital, who
mistook camphor for salt and found it insipid in their
food; exchanged gold for an equal amount of silver—
"the yellow for the white," as they expressed it;—and
sold an incomparable royal jewel for a thousand pieces
of money, because, as the vendor said when reproached
for selling it so cheap, he knew no number beyond
a thousand to ask for. Under these Umayyads the
Arabian or Islamic Empire attained its maximum ex-
tent, for Spain, one of their chief glories, never acknow-
ledged the ‘Abbásid rule. In Egypt and Persia, as well
as in Syria and its capital Damascus, where they held
their court, they were in immediate contact with the chief
centres of ancient learning. How far, we must enquire,
did they profit by the opportunities thus afforded them ?

In the development of their theology, as von Kremer
has shown¹, they were almost certainly influenced by

¹ *Culturgeschichte d. Orients*, vol. ii, pp. 401–405 *et seqq.*

*Early Study of Alchemy*

15

John of Damascus, entitled Chrysorrhoas, and named in Arabic Manşúr, who enjoyed the favour of the first Umayyad Caliph Muʻáwiya. The first impulse given to the desire of the Arabs for knowledge of the wisdom of the Greeks came from the Umayyad prince Khálid the son of Yazíd the son of Muʻáwiya, who had a passion for Alchemy. According to the *Fihrist*¹, the oldest and best existing source of our knowledge on these matters, he assembled the Greek philosophers in Egypt and commanded them to translate Greek and Egyptian books on this subject into Arabic; and these, says the author of the *Fihrist*, "were the first translations made in Islám from one language to another." With this prince is associated the celebrated Arabian alchemist Jábir ibn Hayyán, famous in medieval Europe under the name of Geber. Many, if not most, of the Latin books which passed under his name in the Middle Ages are spurious, being the original productions of European investigators who sought by the prestige attaching to his name to give authority and currency to their own writings. The Arabic originals of his works are rare, and the only serious study of them which I have met with is contained in the third volume of Berthelot's admirable *Histoire de la Chimie au Moyen Âge*, where the text and French translation of one of his genuine treatises are given. Berthelot points out, what, indeed, has long been recognized, that though the chief pursuit of the old alchemists was the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life, they nevertheless made many real and valuable discoveries. How many of these we owe to the Arabs is apparent in such words as *alcohol, alembic* and the like, still current amongst us. It is indeed generally recognized that it was in the domains of chemistry and

¹ p. 242.

16

Arabian Medicine. I

materia medica that the Arabs added most to the body of scientific doctrine which they inherited from the Greeks.

Of medicine proper we find little trace amongst the Arabs at this period, only three or four physicians being specifically mentioned, mostly Christians, and probably non-Arabs. One of them was Ibn Uthál, physician to Muʻáwiya, the first Umayyad Caliph, who was murdered by a man of the tribe of Makhzúm on suspicion of having, at the instigation of the Caliph, poisoned an obnoxious relative named ‘Abdu’r-Rahmán. Another, Abu’l-Ḥakam, also a Christian, lived to be a centenarian, as did also his son Ḥakam. In the case of the latter we have a fairly detailed account of his successful treatment of a case of severe arterial haemorrhage caused by an unskilful surgeon-barber. Neither of these men seems to have written anything, but to ‘Ísá the son of Ḥakam is ascribed a large *Kunnásh*, or treatise on the Art of Medicine, of which no fragment has been preserved. Mention is also made by the Arab biographers of a certain Theodosius or Theodorus¹, evidently a Greek, who was physician to the cruel but capable Ḥajjáj ibn Yúsuf, by whom he was held in high honour and esteem. Some of his aphorisms are preserved, but none of the three or four works ascribed to him. The short list of these medical practitioners of the Umayyad period is closed by a Bedouin woman named Zaynab, who treated cases of ophthalmia. That somewhat more attention began to be paid to public health is indicated by the fact recorded by the historian Ṭabarí² that the Caliph al-Walíd in the year 88/707 segregated the lepers, while as-

¹ Ibn Abí Uşaybi'a (vol. i, pp. 121-123) gives the name in the form of Thiyádhúq (ثياغوق).

² Secunda Series, vol. ii, p. 1196.

John Philoponus

17

signing to them an adequate supply of food. Amongst
the Bedouin the recourse was still to the old charms
and incantations, often accompanied by the application
to the patient of the operator's saliva. An instance of
this is recorded in connection with the poet Jarir¹, who
gave his daughter Umm Ghaylán in marriage to a ma-
gician named Ablaq who had cured him in this fashion
of erysipelas. The practice of medicine amongst the
genuine Arabs of Arabia, both Bedouin and dwellers in
towns, at the present day is succinctly described by
Zwemer in his book *Arabia, the Cradle of Islám*²; and
his description, so far as we can judge, fairly represents
its condition at the remote period of which we are now
speaking.

One important question demands consideration be-
fore we pass on to the great revival of learning under
the early ‘Abbásid Caliphs at Baghdad in the eighth
and ninth centuries of our era. Leclerc in his *Histoire
de la Médecine Arabe* maintains that already, a century
earlier, when the Arabs conquered Egypt, the process
of assimilating Greek learning began. In this process he
assigns an important part to a certain Yaḥyá an-Naḥwí,
or “John the Grammarian,” who enjoyed high favour
with ‘Amr ibnu’l-‘Áṣ, the conqueror and first Muslim
governor of Egypt, and whom he identifies with John
Philoponus the commentator of Aristotle. This Yaḥyá,
of whom the fullest notice occurs in al-Qifṭi’s “History
of the Philosophers” (Ta’ríkhu’l-Ḥukamá)³, was a
Jacobite bishop at Alexandria, who subsequently re-
pudiated the doctrine of the Trinity, and consequently
attracted the favourable notice of the Muslims, to whose
strict monotheism this doctrine is particularly obnoxious.

¹ Bevan's ed. of the *Nagá'id*, p. 840.

² pp. 280-4.

³ Ed. Lippert, pp. 354-7.

B. A. M.

2

18

Arabian Medicine. I

He it was, according to the well-known story, now
generally discredited by Orientalists, who was the ulti-
mate though innocent cause of the alleged burning of
the books in the great library at Alexandria by the
Muslims, a story which Leclerc, in spite of his strong
pro-Arab and pro-Muhammadan sympathies, oddly
enough accepts as a historical fact¹. This Yaḥyá, at
any rate, was a great Greek scholar, and is said by al-
Qiftí to have mentioned in one of his works the year
343 of Diocletian (reckoned from A.D. 284) as the current
year in which he wrote. This would agree very well
with his presence in Egypt at the time of the Arab
conquest in A.D. 640, but would prove that he was not
identical with John Philoponus, who, according to a
note added by Professor Bury to Gibbon's narrative of
the event in question, flourished not in the seventh but
in the early part of the sixth century after Christ². The
precious library of Alexandria had, as Gibbon observes,
been pretty thoroughly destroyed by Christian fanatics
nearly three centuries before the Muslims over-ran
Egypt.

The questions of the fate of the Alexandrian library
and the identity of the two Johns or Yahyás are, how-
ever, quite subordinate to the much larger and more
important question of the state of learning in Egypt at
the time of the Arab conquest. Leclerc's view is that
the School of Medicine, once so famous, long outlived
that of Philosophy, and continued, even though much
fallen from its ancient splendour, until the time of the

¹ The arguments against the truth of this story are well set forth by L. Krehl (Über die Sage von der Verbrennung der Alexandrinischen Bibliothek durch die Araber) in the Acts of the Fourth International Congress of Orientalists (Florence, 1880).

² Vol. v of Bury's ed., p. 452 *ad calc.*

The School of Jundí-Shápúr

19

Arab conquest. This is a difficult point to decide; but Dr Wallis Budge, whose opinion I sought, definitely took the view that the Egyptian writings of this period at any rate, so far as they touched on these topics at all, showed little or no trace of medical science, Greek or other. At the same time we must give due weight to the well-authenticated Arabian tradition as to the translation of Greek works on Alchemy for the Umayyad prince Khálid ibn Yazíd in Egypt, and must admit the possibility, if not the probability, that these translations included other subjects, philosophical, medical and the like, besides that which constituted the aforesaid prince's special hobby.

Be this as it may, it was in the middle of the eighth century of our era and through the then newly-founded city of Baghdad that the great stream of Greek and other ancient learning began to pour into the Muhammadan world and to reclothe itself in an Arabian dress. And so far as Medicine is concerned, the tradition of the old Sásánian school of Jundí-Shápúr was predominant. Of this once celebrated school, now long a mere name, with difficulty located by modern travellers and scholars on the site of the hamlet of Sháh-ábád¹ in the province of Khúzistán in S.W. Persia, a brief account must now be given.

The city owed its foundation to the Sásánian monarch Shápúr I, the son and successor of Ardashír Bábakán who founded this great dynasty in the third century after Christ, and restored, after five centuries and a half of eclipse, the ancient glories of Achaemenian

¹ See Rawlinson's *Notes on a March from Zoháb to Khúzistán* in the *Journal of the Royal Geographical Society*, vol. ix, pp. 71-2, and Layard's remarks in vol. xvi, p. 86 of the same Journal.

2-2

20

Arabian Medicine. I

Persia. Shápúr, after he had defeated and taken captive the Emperor Valerian, and sacked the famous city of Antioch, built, at the place called in Syriac Bêth Lâpât, a town which he named *Veh-az-Andev-i-Shápúr*, or "Shápúr's 'Better than Antioch,'" a name which was gradually converted into *Gundê Shápúr* or in Arabic *Jundí Sábúr*¹. Another "Better than Antioch" was founded in the sixth century of our era by Khusraw Anú-sharwán, the Chosroes of the Greeks and Kisrá of the Arabs, which, to distinguish it from the first, was called *Veh-az-Andev-i-Khusraw*. This latter town, by a practice which prevailed in Persia even until the sixteenth cen-tury, was chiefly populated by the deported citizens—especially craftsmen and artisans—of the foreign town after which it was named; and it seems likely that Jundí-Shápúr also received a considerable number of Greek settlers, for the Greek translations of Shápúr's Pahlawí inscriptions carved on the rocks at Istakhr in Fárs prove that Greek labour was available at this time even in the interior of Persia. Forty or fifty years later, in the early part of the fourth century, in the reign of the second Shápúr, the city had become a royal residence, and it was there that Mání or Manes, the founder of the Manichaean heresy, was put to death, and his skin, stuffed with straw, suspended from one of the city gates, known long afterwards, even in Muhammadan times, as the "Gate of Manes." There also, as appears probable, Shápúr II established the Greek physician Theodosius or Theodorus whom he summoned to attend him, and whose system of medicine is mentioned in the *Fihrist*² as one of the Persian books on Medicine after-

¹ See Th. Nöldeke's *Gesch. d. Perser u. Arab. zur Zeit der Sasaniden* (Leyden, 1879), pp. 40-42.

² p. 303.

The School of Jundí-Shápúr

21

wards translated into Arabic and preserved at any rate
until the tenth century of our era. This physician, who
was a Christian, obtained such honour and consideration
in Persia that Shápúr caused a church to be built for
him and at his request set free a number of his captive
countrymen.

The great development of the school of Jundí-Shápúr
was, however, the unforeseen and unintended result of
that Byzantine intolerance which in the fifth century
of our era drove the Nestorians from their school at
Edessa and forced them to seek refuge in Persian terri-
tory. In the following century the enlightened and
wisdom-loving Khusraw Anúsharwán, the protector of
the exiled Neo-Platonist philosophers¹, sent his physician
Burzúya to India, who, together with the game of chess
and the celebrated *Book of Kalíla and Dimna*, brought
back Indian works on medicine and also, apparently,
Indian physicians to Persia.

The school of Jundí-Shápúr was, then, at the time
of the Prophet Muhammad's birth, at the height of its
glory. There converged Greek and Oriental learning,
the former transmitted in part directly through Greek
scholars, but for the most part through the industrious
and assimilative Syrians, who made up in diligence
what they lacked in originality. Sergius of Ra'su'l-'Ayn,
who flourished a little before this time², was one of those
who translated Hippocrates and Galen into Syriac. Of
this intermediate Syriac medical literature, from which
many, perhaps most, of the Arabic translations of the
eighth and ninth centuries were made, not much survives,
but M. H. Pognon's edition and French translation of
a Syriac version of the *Aphorisms*³ of Hippocrates, and

¹ About A.D. 531. ² He died at Constantinople about A.D. 536.

³ *Une Version Syriaque des Aphorismes d'Hippocrate*, Leipzig, 1903.

22

Arabian Medicine. I

Dr Wallis Budge's *Syriac Book of Medicines*¹, enable us to form some idea of its quality. To the Syrians, whatever their defects, and especially to the Nestorians, Asia owes much, and the written characters of the Mongol, Manchu, Úyghúr and many other peoples in the western half of Asia testify to the literary influence of the Aramaic peoples.

But though the medical teaching of Jundí-Shápúr was in the main Greek, there was no doubt an underlying Persian element, especially in Pharmacology, where the Arabic nomenclature plainly reveals in many cases Persian origins. Unfortunately the two most glorious periods of pre-Islamic Persia, the Achaemenian (B.C. 550-330) and the Sásánian (A.D. 226-640) both terminated in a disastrous foreign invasion, Greek in the first case, Arab in the second, which involved the wholesale destruction of the indigenous learning and literature, so that it is impossible for us to reconstitute more than the main outlines of these two ancient civilizations. Yet the *Avesta*, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians, speaks of three classes of healers, by prayers and religious observances, by diet and drugs, and by instruments; in other words priests, physicians and surgeons. As regards the latter, one curious passage in the *Vendîdâd* ordains that the tyro must operate successfully on three unbelievers before he may attempt an operation on one of the "good Mazdayasnian religion." And, of course, Greek physicians, of whom Ctesias is the best known, besides an occasional Egyptian, were to be found at the Achaemenian court before the time of Alexander of Macedon.

The medical school of Jundí-Shápúr seems to have been little affected by the Arab invasion and conquest

¹ Two vols., text and translation, 1913.

The Bukht-Yishú' Family

23

of the seventh century of our era, but it was not till the
latter half of the eighth century, when Baghdad became
the metropolis of Islám, that its influence began to be
widely exerted on the Muslims. It was in the year
A.D. 765¹ that the second 'Abbásid Caliph al-Manṣúr,
being afflicted with an illness which baffled his medical
advisers, summoned to attend him Júrjís the son of
Bukht-Yishú ('a half-Persian, half-Syriac name, meaning
"Jesus hath delivered")², the chief physician of the great
hospital of Jundí-Shápúr. Four years later Júrjís fell
ill and craved permission to return home, to see his
family and children, and, should he die, to be buried
with his fathers. The Caliph invited him to embrace
the religion of Islám, but Júrjís replied that he preferred
to be with his fathers, whether in heaven or hell. Thereat
the Caliph laughed and said, "Since I saw thee I have
found relief from the maladies to which I had been ac-
customed," and he dismissed him with a gift of 10,000
dínárs, and sent with him on his journey an attendant
who should convey him, living or dead, to Jundí-Shápúr,
the "Civitas Hippocratica" which he loved so well. Júrjís
on his part promised to send to Baghdad to replace him
one of his pupils named 'Ísá ibn Shahlá, but declined to
send his son, Bukht-Yishú' the second, on the ground
that he could not be spared from the Bímáristán, or
hospital, of Jundí-Shápúr.

For six generations and over 250 years the Bukht-
Yishú' family remained pre-eminent in medicine, the
last (Jibrá'il son of 'Ubaydu'lláh son of Bukht-Yishú'
son of Jibrá'il son of Bukht-Yishú' son of Júrjís son of

¹ Al-Qiftí's *Ta'ríkhu'l-Ḥukamá*, p. 158.

² The explanation of these old Persian names beginning or ending with *-bukht* we owe to Professor Th. Nöldeke, *Gesch. d. Artakhshír-i-Pápakán*, p. 49, n. 4.

24

Arabian Medicine. I

Jibrá'il), who died on April 10, 1006, being as eminent and as highly honoured by the rulers and nobles of his time as the first. That a certain exclusiveness and unwillingness to impart their knowledge to strangers characterized the physicians of Jundí-Shápúr may be inferred from the treatment received at the beginning of his career by the celebrated translator of Greek medical works into Arabic, Hunayn ibn Isháq, known to medical Europe as "Johannitius." He was a Christian of Híra with a great passion for knowledge, and acted as dispenser to Yuhanná ibn Másawayh (the "Messues" of the Latino-Barbari), whose lectures he also followed. But he was prone to ask too many troublesome questions, and one day his master, losing patience, exclaimed, "What have the people of Híra to do with medicine? Go and change money in the streets!" and drove him forth in tears; "for," says al-Qiftí¹, "these people of Jundí-Shápúr used to believe that they only were worthy of this science, and would not suffer it to go forth from themselves, their children and their kin." But Hunayn, more resolved than ever on pursuing knowledge to its source, went away for several years to learn Greek. During this period one of his former acquaintances, Yúsuf the physician, one day saw a man with long hair and unclipped beard and moustaches reciting Homer in the street, and, in spite of his changed appearance, recognized his voice as that of Hunayn. He, being questioned, admitted his identity, but enjoined silence on Yúsuf, saying that he had sworn not to continue his medical studies until he had perfected himself in knowledge of the Greek language. When he finally returned, Jibrá'il ibn Bukht-Yishú', to whom he attached himself, was delighted with his Greek scholarship and declared

¹ *Op. cit.*, p. 174.

Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (“Johannitius”)

25

him to be a miracle of learning, and Ibn Másawayh, who had formerly driven him out with contumely, sought Yúsuf's good offices to effect a reconciliation with him. Later he gained high favour with the Caliph, who, however, was minded first to prove his professional honour by a hard test, for he bade him concoct a poison for one of his enemies, offering him rich rewards if he would do so, but severe punishment—imprisonment or death—if he refused. He refused and was imprisoned for a year, when he was again brought before the Caliph and bidden to choose again between compliance and a rich reward, or the sword of the executioner. “I have already told the Commander of the Faithful,” replied Ḥunayn, “that I have skill only in what is beneficial, and have studied naught else”; and being again threatened with instant death he added, “I have a Lord who will give me my right to-morrow in the Supreme Uprising, so if the Caliph would injure his own soul, let him do so.” Then the Caliph smiled and declared that he had only desired to assure himself of Ḥunayn's probity before yielding him implicit confidence. So the incident ended satisfactorily, but it serves to show that the position of Court Physician at Baghdad in early ‘Abbásid times was sometimes a trying one; a fact brought out in the well-known story of the physician Dúbán and King Yúnán (which, however, had a much more tragic ending) in the *Arabian Nights*¹.

Ḥunayn was not only the most celebrated but the most productive of these translators. Of the ten Hippocratic writings mentioned by the author of the *Fihrist* as existing in Arabic translations in his time, seven were his work and three the work of his pupil ‘Ísá ibn Yaḥyá, while the “sixteen books” of Galen were all translated by

¹ Lane's translation (London, 1859), vol. i, pp. 83-6.

26

Arabian Medicine. I

him or his pupil Ḥubaysh. Generally, as we learn from the *Fihrist*¹, Hunayn translated the Greek into Syriac, while Ḥubaysh translated from Syriac into Arabic, the Arabic version being then revised by Hunayn, who, however, sometimes translated directly from Greek into Arabic. All three languages were known to most of these translators, and it is probable, as Leclerc suggests, that whether the translation was made into Syriac or Arabic depended on whether it was primarily designed for Christian or Muslim readers. At the present day comparatively few of these Arabic translations are available, even in manuscript; but good MSS. of the *Aphorisms*² and *Prognostics*³ exist in the British Museum, besides an epitome of the “sixteen books” of Galen⁴ ascribed to Yaḥyá an-Naḥwí, or “John the Grammarian.” Of the *Aphorisms* in Arabic there is an Indian lithographed edition, which, however, I have not seen. This dearth of texts is very unfortunate for the student of Arabian Medicine, who is thereby much hampered in the solution of two important preliminary questions, viz. the accuracy and fidelity of these early Arabic translations, and the development of the Arabic medical terminology, often unintelligible without reference to the Greek original. As regards the first question, Leclerc⁵ is apparently right in his opinion that the translation from Greek into Arabic was generally effected with much greater skill and knowledge than the later translation from Arabic into Latin, and that he who judges Arabian Medicine only by the latter will inevitably undervalue it and do it a great injustice. Indeed it is difficult

¹ p. 289.

² Or. 5914, Or. 6419, Or. 5820, Or. 6386, and Or. 5939.

³ Or. 5914.

⁴ Arundel, Or. 17.

⁵ *Hist. de la Médecine Arabe*, vol. ii, pp. 346-8.

The so-called Sabaeans of Harrán

27

to resist the conclusion that many passages in the Latin
version of the *Qánún* of Avicenna were misunderstood
or not understood at all by the translator, and conse-
quently can never have conveyed a clear idea to the
reader.

Another group of great translators from Greek into
Arabic was provided by the city of Ḩarrán, the classical
Charrae, which remained pagan down to the thirteenth
century, and, by reason of the high degree of Greek
culture long maintained there, was known as Helleno-
polis. How the inhabitants of this city came to be
known as “Sabaeans” from the ninth century onwards,
though they had nothing to do with the true Sabaeans
of Chaldaea (of whom a remnant, known to the Muham-
madans as *al-Mughtasila* from their frequent ceremonial
bathings and washings, and to Europeans, for the same
reason, as “Christians of St John the Baptist,” exist to
the present day near Başra and along the banks of the
Shaṭṭu'l-'Arab), is a very curious story, exhaustively set
forth, with full documentary evidence, by Chwolson
in his great work *Die Ssabier und Ssabismus*¹. Of these
learned Ḩarránians the most celebrated were Thábit
ibn Qurra (born A.D. 836, died A.D. 901), his sons
Ibráhím and Sinán, his grandsons Thábit and Ibráhím,
and his great-grandson Sinán; and the family of Zahrún.
Mention should also be made of another contemporary
translator, though his predilection was for mathematics
rather than medicine, Qusṭá ibn Lúqá, a Christian of
Baalbek in Syria, who died about A.D. 923.

Thus by the tenth century the Muslims, to all of
whom, irrespective of race, Arabic was not only the
language of Revelation and Religion, but also of science,
diplomacy and polite intercourse, had at their disposal

¹ St Petersburg, 1856 (2 vols.). See vol. i, ch. vi (pp. 139-157).

28

Arabian Medicine. I

a great mass of generally excellent translations of all
the most famous philosophical and scientific writings of
the Greeks. For Greek poetry and drama they cared
little, and of the Latin writers they seem to have known
nothing whatever. Of the Greek medical writers, besides
Hippocrates and Galen, their favourites were Rufus of
Ephesus, Oribasius, Paul of Ægina, and Alexander of
Tralles; and, for materia medica, Dioscorides. In some
cases Greek writings, lost in the original, have been pres-
served to us in Arabic translations. The most notable
instance of this is afforded by the seven books of Galen's
*Anatomy* (ix-xv), lost in the original Greek but pres-
served in the Arabic, of which the text, with German
translation and full *apparatus criticus*, has been published
by Dr Max Simon¹, with an admirable Arabic-Greek-
German vocabulary of technical terms, to which re-
ference has already been made.

Were the materials accessible, it would be interesting
to compare those Arabic translations made directly from
the Greek with those which first passed through the
medium of Syriac. Of the few Syriac versions preserved
to us I cannot myself form an opinion, being unfortu-
nately unacquainted with that language, but they are
rather harshly judged by M. Pognon, of whose edition
and translation of the Syriac *Aphorisms* of Hippocrates
I have already spoken². "The Syriac version of the
*Aphorisms* contained in my manuscript," he writes,
"is a very faithful, or rather too faithful, translation of
the Greek text; sometimes, indeed, it is a literal trans-
lation absolutely devoid of sense. This, unfortunately,
does not allow us to determine the epoch at which it

¹ Sieben Bücher Anatomie des Galen, u.s.w., 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1906).

² Une Version Syriaque des Aphorismes d’Hippocrate, texte et traduction, par M. Pognon, Consul de France à Alep (Leipzig, 1903).

Limitations of the Syrian Translators

29

was made, since to render too literally has been the
defect of many Syrian translators."

"I will not venture to say," he continues, "that the
Syrians never possessed clear translations written in a
correct style, but in most of the translations which have
reached us the style is often obscure, the construction
incorrect, and words are often employed in a sense not
properly belonging to them, this generally arising from
the desire of the Syriac translator to reproduce the
Greek text too faithfully. The Syrian translators, when
they found a difficult passage, too often contented them-
selves with rendering each Greek word by a Syriac
word without in any way seeking to write an intelligible
sentence. Thus we find in their translations many
incorrect sentences, and even expressions which have
absolutely no meaning. In short, I believe that when
they did not understand the meaning of a Greek word,
the translators did not hesitate to transcribe it in Syriac
characters, leaving their readers to conjecture the
meaning of these barbarisms which they had created."
The translation of the *Aphorisms*, with which he is
specially concerned, M. Pognon characterizes as "de-
testable," and adds: "Whenever the translator comes
across an obscure passage, his translation is obscure;
and whenever he meets with a passage which is suscep-
tible of several different renderings, his translation can
be interpreted in several different ways." This assertion
he proves by numerous examples.

The Arab mind, on the other hand, is clear and
positive, and the Arabic language nervous, virile and
rich both actually and potentially. The old Arabs were
an acute and observant people, and for all natural objects
which fell under their notice they had appropriate and
finely differentiated words. To render the medical

30

Arabian Medicine. I

works of the Greeks into their own language they had,
of course, in many cases, to invent new terms translated
or imitated from the Greek, and often only to be under-
stood by reference to the Greek originals; but they
already possessed a fairly copious anatomical vocabulary,
which, moreover, they were fond of using in ordinary
life, even in their poetry. Thus the Umayyad Caliph
Yazíd ibn ‘Abdu’l-Malik, who, in 105/723–4, died of
love for the slave-girl Ḩabbába, was deeply stirred by
her singing of the following verse¹:

بَيْنَ التَّرَاقِي وَ اللَّهَاهَا حَرَارَةً * مَا تَطْمَئِنُّ وَلَا تَسْوِعُ فَتَبْرُدُ

“Between the clavicles and the uvula is a burning heat
Which cannot be appeased or swallowed down and cooled.”

The poet al-Mutanabbí (tenth century) has a poem²
on a fever by which he was attacked in Egypt in
Dhu’l-Ḥijja 348 (February 960), and which left him—

عَلِيُّ الجَسْمِ مَمْتَنِعَ الْقِيَامِ * شَدِيدَ السُّكْرِ مِنْ غَيْرِ الْمَدَامِ

“Sick of body, unable to rise up, vehemently intoxicated (i.e. delirious) without wine.”

He compares the fever to a coy maiden who will
only visit him under cover of darkness:

وَزَائِرَتِي كَأَنَّ بِهَا حَيَاءً فليس تزور إلا في الظلام

بِذَلِّتُ لَهَا المُطَارِفُ وَالحَشَاياُ فعافتها و باتت في عظامي

يَضِيقُ الْجَلْدُ عَنْ نَفْسِي وَعَنْهَا فتُوسِعُهُ بَأْنَواعِ السَّقَامِ

اِذَا مَا فَارَقْتَنِي غَسَلْتَنِي كَأَنَّا عَاكِفَانِ عَلَى حَرَامِ

كَأَنَّ الصُّبْحَ يَطْرُدُهَا فَتَجْرِي مدامها بأربعة سجام

¹ *Kitábu ’l-Fakhri*, ed. Ahlwardt, p. 155.

² Ed. Dieterici, pp. 675-680.

Al-Mutanabbī's Ode to a Fever

31

أراقب وقتها من غير شوقٍ،
مراقبة المشوق المستهام
وَيَصْدُقُ وَعْدُهَا وَالصَّدَقَ شَرٌّ
إذا ألقاك في الْكَرَبِ العظام

"And it is as though she who visits me were filled with modesty,
For she does not pay her visits save under cover of darkness.
I freely offered her my linen and my pillows,
But she refused them, and spent the night in my bones.
My skin is too contracted to contain both my breath and her,
So she relaxes it with all sorts of sickness.
When she leaves me, she washes me [with perspiration]
As though we had retired apart for some forbidden action.
It is as though the morning drives her away,
And her lachrymal ducts are flooded in their four channels.
I watch for her time [of arrival] without desire,
Yet with the watchfulness of the eager lover.
And she is ever faithful to her appointed time, but faithfulness is an evil
When it casts thee into grievous sufferings."

Under such astonishing imagery are clearly depicted
the delirium and regular nightly recurrence of the fever,
the rigors which mark its onset, and the copious
perspiration with which it concludes, the latter being
fantastically likened to the weeping of a woman torn
from her lover's arms.

That in the days of the Caliphate every educated
person was expected to take some interest in Medicine
and to know something about Anatomy is shown by the
curious story of the equally fair and talented slave-girl
Tawaddud in the *Arabian Nights*. The girl is offered
to the Caliph Hárúnu'r-Rashíd for an enormous price
(10,000 *dínárs*) by her bankrupt master Abu'l-Ḥusn, and
the Caliph agrees to pay this sum provided she can
answer satisfactorily any questions addressed to her by
those most learned in each of the many branches of
knowledge in which she claims to excel. Therefore the
most notable professors of Theology, Law, Exegesis

32

Arabian Medicine. I

of the *Qur'an*, Medicine, Astronomy, Philosophy, Rhetoric and Chess examine her in succession, and in each case she not only gives satisfactory replies to all their questions, but ends by putting to each of them a question which he is unable to answer. Lane describes this story, which provides material for six of the 1001 Nights¹, as "extremely tiresome to most readers," but it is very valuable as indicating what was regarded by the medieval Muslims as a good all-round education. The medical portion of the examination includes the outlines of Anatomy and Physiology, according to Arabian ideas, diagnosis from signs and symptoms, humoristic Pathology, Hygiene, Dietetics and the like. The enumeration of the bones is fairly complete, but that of the blood-vessels very vague. Of the branches of the Aorta, says Tawaddud, "none knoweth the tale save He who created them, but it is said that they number 360"—a mystical number, 12×30, which still plays a great part in the doctrines of certain Muhammadan sects, by whom it is called "The Number of All Things" (عدد كُلِّ شَيْء) for reasons which it would be tedious to enumerate in this place.

I have already taken up too much of your time this afternoon in the discussion of these preliminaries. In my next lecture I propose to speak of four of the most notable early medical writers of the Muslims who succeeded the epoch of the great translators. These were all Persians by race, though they wrote in Arabic; and the Latin versions of the chief works of three of them, known to the Latino-Barbari as Rhazes, Haly Abbas and Avicenna, constituted three of the most highly esteemed medical works current in medieval Europe.

¹ Nights 449-454; ed. Macnaghten, vol. ii, pp. 512-521; Sir R. Burton's translation, vol. v, pp. 218-227.

LECTURE II

IN my last lecture I traced the growth of the so-called "Arabian Medicine" down to the ninth century of our era, the time of the great translators of the early 'Abbásid period; and I showed how, by their diligence and learning, the teachings of the most eminent physicians of Ancient Greece, notably Hippocrates, Galen, Oribasius, Rufus of Ephesus and Paul of Ægina, were rendered accessible to the Muslim world. We must now pass to the independent Arabic writers on medicine, who, starting from this foundation, compiled more or less original works embodying, to some extent, observations of their own, and arranged on their own plan. The great extent of the subject, however, obliges me to impose on myself somewhat strict limitations of region, period and topic, and I shall therefore confine myself to the two centuries immediately succeeding the Golden Age, which lies between A.D. 750 and 850, and to the Eastern lands of the Caliphate, especially Persia. Further, I shall confine myself to four or five of the principal medical writers of this limited period, and, as a rule, to one only of the works of each. Even under such limitations only a very partial and superficial view can be obtained, for a whole series of lectures might evidently be devoted to a single section of any one of the works which I propose briefly to discuss to-day.

Before proceeding further, however, there are one or two preliminary matters on which a few words should be said, and first of all as to the evolution of Arabic scientific terminology. The Syrians, as we have seen, were too much disposed to transcribe Greek words as

B. A. M.

3

34

Arabian Medicine. II

they stood, without any attempt at elucidation, leaving
the reader to make the best he could of them. The
medieval Latin translators from the Arabic did exactly
the same, and the Latin Qánún of Avicenna swarms
with barbarous words which are not merely transcrip-
tions, but in many cases almost unrecognizable mis-
transcriptions, of Arabic originals. Thus the coccyx is
named in Arabic *uṣ‘uṣ (غُصْعُ), or, with the definite
article, al-‘uṣ‘uṣ (الْعُصْعُ), which appears in the Latin
version as alhosos; al-qatan (القَطْنُ), the lumbar region,
appears as alchatim; al-‘ajuz or al-‘ajiz (الْعَجْزُ), the
sacrum, variously appeārs as alhauis and al-hagiazi;
and an-nawájidh (النَّوَاجِدُ), the wisdom-teeth, as nuaged
or neguegidi. Dozens of similar monstrosities can be
gleaned from Dr Hyrtl’s Das Arabische und Hebräische
in der Anatomie (Vienna, 1879), and it must be con-
fessed that the Arabs also were, in a lesser degree,
guilty of a similar mutilation of Greek words, as, for
example, the transformation of akhnεῖος into anfas
(αὐνοῦσ), which in turn, in the hands of the Latino-Barbari,
became abgas.

Generally, however, in spite of the fact that the
Arabic language almost entirely lacks the Greek facility
of forming compound words to express new and com-
plex ideas, the Arabs succeeded in paraphrasing the
Greek technical terms with fair success. Diagnosis is
fairly rendered by tashkhís, which primarily means the
identification of a person (shakhṣ); prognosis is more
cumbrously rendered by taqdimatul-ma‘rifati, literally,
the sending forward of knowledge. In the earliest
Arabic medical books, like the Firdawsu’l-Hikmat,
or “Paradise of Wisdom,” of which I shall speak
immediately, strange Syro-Persian words, probably
borrowed from the vocabulary of Jundí-Shápúr, and

*Evolution of Arabic Terminology*

35

subsequently replaced by good Arabic equivalents, appear. Thus in the almost unique MS. of the work just mentioned there twice occurs a word for a headache affecting the whole head (as contrasted with *shaqíqa*, which denotes hemicrania or migraine), faultily written in both cases (once as سنوريا and once as سـورتا), which only after numerous enquiries of Syriac scholars was identified as the Syriac *sanwartā* (سَنَوْرَتَا), said to be a Persian word meaning primarily a helmet. And in fact it is evidently the Persian *sar-band* (سَرْبَنَّد) or *sar-wand* with transposition of the *r* and the *n* (*san-ward* for *sar-wand*) and the addition of the Syriac final emphatic *å*. This may serve as an instance of the kind of trouble which the reader or translator, or still more the editor, of these old Arabic medical works is apt to meet with, for of scarcely any, even of the few which have been published in the original, do critical editions exist.

On the other hand, apart from the fairly copious
anatomical, pathological and medical vocabulary properly
belonging to the Arabic language, it has a great power
of forming significant derivatives from existing roots,
which, when formed, are at once intelligible. Thus there
exists in Arabic a special form for the "noun of pain,"
wherein the first root-letter is followed by a short *u* and
the second by a long *ā* (the form known to Arab
grammarians as *فعَال*, *fuʻál*), and this is the form assumed
by the names of most diseases and ailments; as the
already mentioned *sudā* ('ضَدَاع'), "a splitting headache,"
the "soda" of the Latino-Barbari; *zukám* ('زُكَام'), "a
catarrh"; *judhám* ('جُذَام'), "elephantiasis," etc. On this
analogy we get, from the root *dawr* ('دَوْر'), "revolving,"
*duwár* ('دُوَار'), "vertigo," the sickness produced by being
whirled round; from *bahr* ('بَحْر'), "the sea," *buḥár* ('بُحَار'),

3-2

36

Arabian Medicine. II

“sea-sickness”; from khamr (خَمْر), “wine,” khumár (خُمَّار), the headache resulting from undue indulgence in wine; and so forth. I never met with the word jubál (جَبَّال) from jabal (جَبَل), “a mountain,” but, if I did meet with it, I should know that it could mean nothing else but “mountain-sickness.” In other cases the Arabic technical term implies a pathological theory, as, for example, istisqá (اِسْتِسْقَاء), mustasqí (مُسْتَسْقِي), which are respectively the verbal noun and the active participle of the tenth, or desiderative, conjugation of the root saga, yasqí (يَسْقَى), “to give drink to,” and in ordinary language mean “craving for drink” and “one who craves for drink,” but in Medicine “dropsy” and “dropsical,” conformably to the familiar Latin adage, *Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops*. Thus it will be apparent that Arabic is on the whole well adapted for providing a suitable technical terminology, which, in fact, it has done for the whole Muslim world, whether they speak Arabic, Persian, Turkish or Urdú, and which, as the modern Egyptian Press testifies, it continues to do at the present day.

Another point deserving brief notice is the question whether dissection was ever practised by the Muslims. The answer is usually given in the negative, and I must admit that I incline to this view; but in an immense, unfinished, modern Persian biographical dictionary entitled *Náma-i-Dánishwarán*, “the Book of Learned Men,” compiled by command of the late Náşiru’d-Dín Sháh by four learned men, to wit Mírzá Abu’l-Fadl of Sáwa the physician, Shaykh Muḥammad Mahdí ‘Abdu’r-Rabb-ábádí, entitled *Shamsu’l-‘Ulamá*, Mírzá Ḥasan-i-Ṭálaqání, entitled *Adíb*, and Mirzá ‘Abdu’l-Wahháb ibn ‘Abdu’l-‘Alí of Qazwín, and lithographed at Ṭihrán.

Dissection in Muslim Lands

37

25 years ago, it is stated¹ that the celebrated Yuhanná ibn Másawayh, being unable to obtain human subjects, dissected apes in a special dissecting-room which he built on the banks of the Tigris, and that a particular species of ape, considered to resemble man most closely, was, by command of the Caliph al-Mu'taşim, supplied to him about the year A.D. 836 by the ruler of Nubia. This story is given on the authority of Ibn Abí Uşaybi'a, in whose *Classes of Physicians*² it in fact occurs in a less clear and detailed form. It is, however, not to be found in al-Qifṭi's *History of the Philosophers*, and cannot, I fear, be regarded as affording weighty evidence as to the practice of dissection in the medical schools of the Arabs. This Yuhanná ibn Másawayh had a bad temper and a sharp tongue. According to the *Fihrist* he once said to a courtier who had annoyed him, "If the ignorance wherewith thou art afflicted were converted into understanding, and then divided amongst a hundred beetles, each one of them would be more sagacious than Aristotle!"

To come now to the medical writers of whom I propose to speak this afternoon, the oldest of them is 'Alí ibn Rabban of Tabaristán, the Persian province south of the Caspian Sea. Rabban, as he himself explains at the beginning of his book, was the title, not the name, of his father.

"My father," he says, "was the son of a certain scribe of the city of Merv...who had a great zeal for the pursuit of virtue...and sought to derive benefit from books on Medicine and Philosophy, preferring Medicine to the profession of his fathers. Herein his object was not so much to seek after praise and profit as to conform himself to the Divine Attributes, and so to earn

¹ Vol. ii, pp. 37-8.

² Vol. i, p. 178 of the Cairo ed.

IX. C

38

Arabian Medicine. II

the consideration of mankind. Wherefore he received
the title of *Rabban*, which being interpreted signifies
'our Master' and 'our Teacher.'"

From this title we may infer that our author's father
was a Christian or a Jew, and in fact al-Qiftī', who gives
a short notice of him, says that he professed the latter
religion; that the father's proper name was Sahl, and
that the son only made profession of Islám after he
entered the service of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil. Pre-
viously to this he had been secretary to the celebrated
Mázyár, of the noble Persian house of Qáren, who
rebelled against the Caliph in the hope of liberating his
country from the Arab yoke, and was finally captured
and crucified at Baghdadád beside the heresiarch Bábak.
'Alí ibn Rabban subsequently entered the service of
the Caliph, and finally, in the third year of his reign
(A.D. 850), succeeded, after many interruptions, in com-
pleting the work on Medicine and Natural Philosophy
on which he had long been engaged, and which he
entitled *Firdawsu'l-Ḥikmat*, the "Paradise of Wisdom."
This is nearly all that is known of his life, except that
from an illustration given in his book² it is evident that
he was, as his *nisba* implies, familiar with the mountains
and mists of Ṭabaristán, and the much more important
fact that he was one of the teachers of the great
physician ar-Rází or Rhazes, a fact which in itself in-
vests his work with considerable interest. According
to the *Fihrist*³ he only wrote four books, of which the
"Paradise of Wisdom" is the most important. It must
at one time have been well known and highly esteemed,
for, as we learn from Yáqút's *Dictionary of Learned
Men*⁴, the great historian Muḥammad ibn Jarír aṭ-

¹ p. 231.

² Brit. Mus. MS. **Arundel, Or. 41**, f. 15a.

³ p. 296.

⁴ “E. J. W. Gibb Memorial” Series, vi, 6, p. 429.