Haly Abbas

Islamic medicine was influenced by the traditional Arab medicine of the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, as well as by the ancient Roman medicine known as Unani, the ancient Indian medicine Ayurveda, and ancient Iranian medicine.

The name given to the whole body of medical theory and practice expressed in Arabic, the language (universal language) of Islamic civilization in the Middle Ages. Although the term Arab medicine is also used in the history of medicine, some of the important figures of the period were not Arabs and lived in Turkish cities such as Rayy and Hamadan.

History

The birth and development of Islamic medicine passed roughly through three phases:

1. The first phase, in which foreign sources were translated into Arabic. This phase corresponds roughly to the period between the 7th and 8th centuries CE.

2. The second phase, in which Muslim physicians made original contributions and achievements to medical science. This phase falls between the 9th and 13th centuries CE.

3. The third phase, after the 13th century CE. In this phase, as in other fields of science, there was a stagnation and decline in the field of medicine as well.

In the first phase, Syrian and Iranian scholars made translations from the ancient Greek and Syriac literature in branches of science that also included fields such as philosophy, astrology and medicine. Muslim rulers such as the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma'mun contributed to the development of these activities by supporting the translators financially. Although the great majority of the translators were Christian, they were respected by the Muslim rulers and their activities were supported. (2)

In the 9th century CE, Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated numerous works of Galen, the father of Greek medicine, into Arabic. In addition, the works of the medieval Persian period at Gondishapur and works from the Indian world such as the Sushruta Samhita and the Charaka Samhita were also rendered into Arabic. Shortly afterwards, Muslim physicians began to make contributions in various fields of medicine such as anatomy, bacteriology, microbiology, ophthalmology, pathology, pharmacology, physiology, psychology, surgery and pharmacological sciences. Islamic physicians and scholars created a vast and complex medical literature in which they brought together theory and practice in the field of medicine, an important part of this civilization. Hellenic medical knowledge, including the works of Galen and Hippocrates, was later transmitted again to the West by means of this literature.

Islamic Medical Scholars

Among the Islamic medical scholars, Avicenna in particular had an important influence on the history of Western medicine. His work al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) was translated into Latin and went through more than thirty-five editions in the 15th and 16th centuries alone.

Another name as famous as Avicenna in the Islamic world is Abu Bakr al-Razi (854–932), who was born in the city of Rayy in Khorasan and who, for his work on Galen, was given the name the "Galen of Islam." The owner of more than fifty medical works and author of al-Mansuri, which was translated into Latin in the 15th century, al-Razi combined the practice of Hippocrates with the theories of Galen. Six of his works belong to medical deontology. He discovered sulfuric acid and added many new drugs to pharmacology.

Al-Zahrawi (936–1013), born in Córdoba in Spain, is the greatest surgeon and anatomist of the Islamic world. He introduced into medicine surgical principles that could be considered modern for his time, drew illustrations of surgical instruments for the first time, and applied cauterization and amputation methods. His most famous surgical work bears the title "al-Tasrif fi al-Tibb."

Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi is known in Latin as "Haly Abbas." He was an Iranian Muslim physician and medical scholar. He is known for his work on medicine and psychology titled "Kitab al-Maliki" and for performing the first cancer operation about 1000 years ago.

One of the important physicians of the Islamic world is Ibn al-Nafis, who worked in Damascus and Cairo in the 13th century. In his work "Commentary on the Anatomy Section of Avicenna's Canon" he objected to Galen's account of the circulatory system. He rejected Galen's view that there were pores in the wall between the right and left ventricles of the heart. According to Ibn al-Nafis, there is no pore at all in that location. This means that the blood coming to the right side of the heart goes to the lungs and from there passes to the left ventricle — that is, the phenomenon we today call the pulmonary (lesser) circulation. Although this explanation was known in its time in the Islamic and Ottoman world, it was not noticed by Europe.

The Four Elements

According to Pythagoras, a fourfold rhythm governs nature — the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), the four basic elements (fire, air, water, earth), and their four physical qualities (heat, cold, dryness, moisture). In the 5th century BCE, Empedocles of Sicily (492–432), influenced by these views, proposed that the universe is composed of four basic elements that are opposed to one another to a primary and secondary degree. These were Fire (dry-hot), Air (moist-hot), Water (cold-moist) and Earth (cold-dry).

This theory of Empedocles was adopted by Hippocrates and applied to the human body. According to this understanding, called the theory of human pathology, the body was a structure composed of 4 elements. This theory remained in force in Eastern and Western medicine for about 2500 years. Today it continues to survive in some respects in folk medicine.

The theory of the Four Elements in ancient Greek medicine, or what is called Akhlat-i Arba'a (the four humours) in the Islamic-Arab medical world, was expanded in Avicenna's (980–1037) work al-Qanun fi al-Tibb by the inclusion of emotional and mental states, disposition and dreams.

Turkish

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Tibb al-Nabawi, trans. Yusuf Ertuğrul, Uygun Matbaacılık

Prof. Dr. Ali Haydar Bayat, Kemaliyye: A Medical Treatise Written in Early Anatolian Turkish, Merkezefendi Traditional Medicine Association, Istanbul, 2007

———, "Lokman Hekim in Turkish Culture", Turkish World Research Foundation, Istanbul 2001

Celaleddin Hızır (Hacı Paşa), Müntehab-ı Şifa, Ankara 1990

Yadigar: the 15th-century Turkish medical book Yadigar-ı İbn-i Şerif, edited by M. Yahya Okutan, Merkezefendi Traditional Medicine Association, Istanbul, 2004

Abdülvehhab bin Yusuf ibn Ahmed el-Mardini, Kitab al-Muntakhab fi al-Tibb 823-1420, ed. Prof. Dr. Ali Haydar Bayat, Merkezefendi Traditional Medicine Association, Istanbul, 2005

Turkish Folk Medicine Symposium. Some Prescription Examples from the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries and Their Place in Our Folk Medicine. 23–25 November 1988, Ankara.

English

Nil Sarı & M. B. Zülfikar "Paracelsusian Influence on Ottoman Medicine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries" in Transfer of Modern Science & Technology to the Muslim World. pp. 157–180.

Edward G. Browne, (2002). Islamic Medicine. Goodword Books. ISBN 81-87570-19-9.

Michael W. Dols, (1984). Medieval Islamic Medicine: Ibn Ridwan's Treatise "On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt", Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-04836-9.

Peter E. Pormann; Emilie Savage-Smith (2007). Medieval Islamic Medicine. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-2066-4.

Roy Porter, (2001). The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00252-4.

Manfred Ullmann, (1978). Islamic Medicine, Islamic Surveys. ISBN 0-85224-325-1.

Max Meyerhof, Studies in Medieval Arabic Medicine, London, 1984

Sami Khalaf Hamarneh, Background of Yunani (Unani), Arabic and Islamic Medicine and Pharmacy, ed. Hakim Mohammad Said, Karachi: MAS Printers, 1997

Sources

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