Medicine Browser: Prophetic Medicine, Medicine, Anatomy, Surgery, Drugs and Treatment in Islam

The museum's records on medicine

The museum's curated records on medicine itself: prophetic medicine and its remedies; the physicians, men and women, from al-Harith ibn Kalada and Rufayda al-Aslamiyya to al-Razi, Ibn Sina, al-Zahrawi and Ibn al-Nafis; the hospitals; the medical books; anatomy, surgery and drugs; the plagues; and the rulings and fatwas on treatment.

1. Sultan Bayezid II Complex, EdirneDraft

   Medicine

   Bayezid II's vast külliye on the west bank of the Tunca, built by the architect Hayrettin in 1484–8: mosque, imaret, bakery, hospital, insane asylum and medical school where music was played to heal the sick.

2. The 'Adudi BimaristanDraft

   Medicine

   The 'Adudi Bimaristan of Baghdad, the hospital 'Adud al-Dawla built: opened at the start of Rabi' II 372 with everything spent that could perfect it — physicians gathered in it, medicines, wardens, servants, vessels and …

3. al-Bimaristan al-Muqtadiri

   Medicine

   The Muqtadiri Bimaristan at Baghdad's Bab al-Sham, founded by al-Muqtadir in AH 306 on the advice of the physician Sinan ibn Thabit.

4. Bimaristan al-Sayyida

   Medicine

   The Bimaristan of the Sayyida at Baghdad's Suq Yahya on the Tigris, founded by al-Muqtadir for his mother and opened by the physician Sinan ibn Thabit in AH 306.

5. The Mu'ayyadi Bimaristan of WasitDraft

   Medicine

   A hospital opened in Wasit on Tuesday, the fifteenth of Dhu al-Qa'da 413 AH, built by Mu'ayyad al-Mulk Abu 'Ali al-Hasan al-Rukhkhi, vizier of Musharraf al-Dawla. Medicines and syrups were brought to it, a storekeeper, p…

6. Dayr HizqilDraft

   Medicine

   A Syrian monastery given over to the mad; al-Mubarrad told how he entered it asking its monks for a lunatic of pleasant speech to laugh with his companions over, and was shown a raised iwan where they were graded each to…

7. Hafsa Sultan DarussifaDraft

   Medicine

   The Hafsa Sultan Darussifa, the historic monument.

8. Qalawun complex

   Medicine

   Sultan Qalawun's Cairo complex (1285) — madrasa, hospital and domed tomb, the richest Mamluk ensemble on al-Mu'izz street.

9. Suleymaniye DarultibDraft

   Medicine

   The Suleymaniye Darultib, the historic monument.

10. Contagion (adwa)Draft

    Medicine

    Linguistically, adwa is a sickness passing from its owner to another; as a technical term it is the same idea. Most scholars hold that disease does not pass by its own nature but by God's act and decree, and they reconci…

11. Adwiya (drugs and materia medica in Islamic pharmacology)

    Drugs

    Adwiya, the plural of dawa, means every substance that affects the body, used as a remedy or a poison. Muslim pharmacology rested on Greek learning, distinguished simple from compound drugs and vegetable, animal and mine…

12. Afsantin (wormwood in Arabic pharmacology)

    Drugs

    Arabic term, from the Greek apsinthion, for common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) and similar plants; in medical writings it is called kashuth rumi. Muslim pharmacologists took its uses from classical sources, rated the…

13. Afyun (opium)

    Drugs

    Opium, the dried juice of the unripe capsules of the poppy (Papaver somniferum), known to the Greeks and used by Muslim physicians as a remedy and a narcotic. The poppy was grown in Upper Egypt until the 19th century and…

14. Akrabadhin (the pharmacopoeia, a treatise on compound drugs)

    Drugs

    Akrabadhin, from the Syriac grabadhin, reproducing a Greek word for 'treatise', was used by the Arabs for treatises on compounding drugs, the pharmacopoeias. The first to win universal acceptance in the caliphate was tha…

15. Simple and compound drugs (al-adwiya al-mufrada wal-murakkaba)Draft

    Drugs

    Book II of the Canon is on simple drugs, and its first part sets out the natural rules for knowing them in six treatises, among them the knowing of their temperaments by experiment and by analogy. For experiment Ibn Sina…

16. Venesection, or bloodletting (al-fasd)Draft

    Surgery

    For Ibn Sina venesection is a general evacuation that relieves a plethora of the humours, one of the manual modes of treatment. The fourth fann of Book I gives it its own chapter, covering who may be bled and who should …

17. Black seed (al-habba al-sawda)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    The black seed is the subject of a report in both Sahih collections in which the Prophet says 'in the black seed is a cure for every disease except al-sam', and al-sam is death. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya says it is the shun…

18. Fever (al-humma)Draft

    Medicine

    In the two Sahih collections the Prophet says 'fever is from the heat of Hell; cool it with water', and in Ibn Abbas's version there is doubt whether the words were 'with the water of Zamzam'. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya unde…

19. Ithmid and kohl (al-ithmid wa-l-kuhl)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Ithmid is the black stone of kohl, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya says the best comes from Isfahan. Abu Dawud reports that the Prophet ordered scented ithmid at bedtime and said 'let the fasting person avoid it', and Ibn Maj…

20. Setting fractures and dislocations (al-jabr wal-kasr)Draft

    Surgery

    Ibn Sina devotes the fifth fann of Book IV of the Canon to bone-setting, in three treatises: dislocation and what goes with it, general principles of fracture, and fractures of each part of the body from the skull to the…

21. Surgery, the work of the hand (al-jiraha)Draft

    Surgery

    In the Canon Ibn Sina makes the use of manual operations the third mode of treatment, after regimen and drugs. For him this heading takes in incision of abscesses, the cutting away of a corrupted organ, cautery, the trea…

22. Smallpox and chickenpoxDraft

    Medicine

    Of the epidemic diseases that scourged nations, recorded in Arabia and beyond; the smallpox many commentators name as the epidemic that struck Abraha's People of the Elephant.

23. Desert truffle (al-kam'a)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    The kam'a, the desert truffle, is a plant that comes up from the ground in spring without sowing or watering, and in al-Bukhari the Prophet says 'the kam'a is part of the manna, and its water is a cure for the eye'. Ibn …

24. Cautery (al-kayy)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Cautery is treatment by fire, and the reports on it include some in which the Prophet has it done and some in which he dislikes it. In al-Bukhari: 'healing is in three things: a drink of honey, the cut of a cupper's blad…

25. Ladud and sa'ut (oral and nasal drops)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Ladud is what a person is given in one side of the mouth, and sa'ut is what is poured into the nose. The reports have the Prophet using a nasal drop, and his household giving him an oral drop in his illness while he sign…

26. Indian and marine costus (al-qust al-hindi, al-qust al-bahri)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Indian and marine qust (costus) is among the drugs named in the reports. In al-Bukhari: 'hold to this Indian aloeswood, for in it are seven cures: it is used as a nasal drop for the throat ailment (udhra) and as an oral …

27. Senna and sannut (al-sana wa-l-sannut)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Senna (sana) is a Hijazi plant, the best being from Mecca, and a laxative drug according to Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. Al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah report from Asma' bint Umays that the Prophet asked her what she used for a pu…

28. Talbina (barley gruel)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Talbina is a thin gruel of barley flour with its bran, named for its likeness to milk (laban) in whiteness and thinness. Al-Bukhari and Muslim report from 'A'isha the Prophet's words 'talbina rests the heart of the sick …

29. The plague (ta'un)Draft

    Medicine

    Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim report the plague described as a torment God sent upon whom He willed and made a mercy for believers: who hears of it in a land does not enter, who is in it does not flee, and who dies o…

30. Prophetic medicine (al-tibb al-nabawi)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Prophetic medicine is what the reports preserve of the Prophet's guidance in treating the body, as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya presents it in Zad al-Ma'ad. Ibn al-Qayyim sorts the Prophet's treatment into three kinds: by natu…

31. Prophetic medicine and alternative medicine — what it is and its limits

    Prophetic medicineMedicine

    The 'Al-Wasatiyya' episode on prophetic and alternative medicine. Asked why people turn to it, the studio audience voted 56% because it is natural rather than chemical, 27% because of shar'i proofs and 17% because it is …

32. Theriac and poisons (al-tiryaq wal-sumum)Draft

    Drugs

    Ibn Sina gives the sixth fann of Book IV of the Canon to poisons, dividing them into those that act by a quality in them and those that act by their form and whole substance, and he sets out signs for recognising them an…

33. Epidemic diseaseDraft

    Medicine

    The general disease spreading through a land. Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim report the Prophet's saying: if it falls in a land you are in, do not flee it, and do not enter it.

34. AnatomyDraft

    Anatomy

    In his commentary on the Canon's anatomy, Ibn al-Nafis says that religious restraint and compassion kept him from dissecting himself. He therefore relied on earlier practitioners, chiefly Galen, for the shapes of the inn…

35. Aqlaf (an uncircumcised man)Draft

    Surgery

    Aqlaf is a man who has not been circumcised; its opposite is the mukhtatan (circumcised). Removing the foreskin is called khitan in men and khafd in women. The jurists agree that removing the foreskin is one of the pract…

36. Arab medicine in European schoolsDraft

    Medicine

    Arslan argues that Arab medical books were the standard teaching texts in European schools until the late sixteenth century, when Europeans began translating Hippocrates directly from Greek. He quotes a French historian …

37. Honey: its medicinal use and zakat (asal)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    In the lexicon, asal is the saliva of the bee, which God made a healing for people; the Arabs use the word for anything found sweet. Using honey as medicine is permitted, and most scholars read the Qur'anic verse as sayi…

38. Disease (al-marad)Draft

    Medicine

    Ibn Sina defines disease as an unnatural state of the body from which an injury to function follows directly, either an unnatural temperament or an unnatural composition. He separates it from the cause, which comes first…

39. The four elements (al-arkan)Draft

    Medicine

    For Ibn Sina the elements are simple bodies, not divisible into bodies different in form, and all compound beings are made from them by mixture. There are four: fire and air are light, water and earth heavy. He describes…

40. Hamiyya (diet and abstention in illness)Draft

    Prophetic medicineMedicine

    Hamiyya lexically means prohibition, to keep the sick from what harms him, and it is a lawful form of treatment on the hadith that God sent a cure for every disease except old age. Ibn al-Qayyim takes as its root the Qur…

41. Health (al-sihha)Draft

    Medicine

    The first book of the Canon, citing Galen, divides the states of the body into three: health, disease, and an intermediate state between them. Health is a condition in which the body, in its temperament and composition, …

42. Cupping (hijama)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Hijama is the drawing of blood by suction after the skin has been cut with a cupping instrument. It differs from fasd, which is opening a vein. Jurists regard cupping as recommended for treatment, on the basis of hadiths…

43. Humours (al-akhlat)Draft

    Medicine

    Ibn Sina treats humours in the fourth section of Book I, Fann 1, in two chapters; the first is on the nature of a humour and its kinds. The commendable humours are, he says, four: blood, which is the best, phlegm, yellow…

44. Cupping (ihtijam)Draft

    Prophetic medicine

    Ihtijam is asking for cupping. Cupping is a medical act with the consequences of medicine; for instance, the cupper may look at the private parts of the cupped person in necessity. The blood of cupping is impure like oth…

45. Retention and enema (ihtiqan)Draft

    DrugsTreatment

    Ihtiqan in the lexicon is holding back urine; in law it is both holding back urine and taking medicine by enema through the rear. The Hanafis, Shafi'is and Hanbalis hold that holding back urine does not break ablution, a…

46. Visiting the sick (iyada)Draft

    Prophetic medicineMedicineTreatment

    In the lexicon, iyada means visiting in general, but the word became fixed for visiting the sick. The jurists differ on its ruling. The majority hold it a sunna or recommended act, which may rise to an obligation for som…

47. Khitan (circumcision)Draft

    Surgery

    Khitan (circumcision) lexically is the cutting of the foreskin of a male, or of the female's nub; it is also called khafd and i'dhar, and the word names the place of the cut. The jurists differ in several views on whethe…

48. The medical sectsDraft

    Medicine

    The Empiricist, Dogmatist and 'mountain-medicine' sects of physicians debated at al-Wathiq's majlis — the dogmatists claiming Hippocrates and Galen.

49. The stages of the embryoDraft

    Anatomy

    God forms the human in the womb in stages: a drop, then a clinging clot, then a lump shaped and unshaped, then bones clothed in flesh, then brought forth as another creation — blessed is God, the best of creators.

50. Medical treatment (al-mu'alaja)Draft

    MedicineTreatment

    Fann 4 of Book I classifies the modes of treatment by general diseases, in thirty-two chapters. Ibn Sina says treatment is completed by three things: regimen with diet, the use of drugs, and manual procedures. The rules …

51. MedicineDraft

    Medicine

    Ibn Sina defines medicine as the science that studies the human body insofar as it is healthy or departs from health, in order to keep health and restore it when lost. Its subjects include the elements, temperaments, hum…

52. Treating the wounded in the Prophet's time (mudawat al-jarha)Draft

    Surgery

    The hadith books report the care of the wounded in the Prophet's campaigns. Al-Rubayyi' bint Mu'awwidh says the women were with the Prophet 'giving drink and treating the wounded'; Sahl ibn Sa'd tells that Fatima took a …

53. Powers and actions (al-quwa wal-af'al)Draft

    Medicine

    Ibn Sina treats powers and actions together in the sixth section of Book I, Fann 1, in one part and one chapter; the part on powers has six chapters. Each power is known from the action it is the source of, and each acti…

54. Regimen of health (al-tadbir)Draft

    Medicine

    Ibn Sina says that keeping health and removing disease need further subjects, among them the regimen of food and drink, the choice of air, and the measure of movement and rest. In Fann 3 of Book I he treats the common re…

55. RuqyahDraft

    Prophetic medicineTreatment

    The lawful counter-incantation: reciting Qur'an and permissible supplications over the sick or afflicted to seek healing and God's protection — what the Prophet himself did when bewitched, distinct from unlawful ruqyah b…

56. Ruqya (healing by recitation and charms): when it is lawful, its conditions, and the taking of a fee for itDraft

    Prophetic medicineTreatment

    Ruqya in the lexicon is the charm recited over a sufferer from fever or fits, and its plural is ruqa. The majority allow healing by recitation under three conditions: that it use the words of God or His names and attribu…

57. Symptoms and signs (al-a'rad wal-dala'il)Draft

    Medicine

    For Ibn Sina a symptom (ard) is what follows a disease and is unnatural: it may be contrary to the natural state, as pain in colic is, or not contrary to it. Symptoms and signs are treated in the third section of Fann 2,…

58. Seeking treatment (tadawi)Draft

    MedicineTreatment

    Treatment is lawful in general. Most jurists hold it permitted; the Shafi'is, al-Qadi, Ibn Aqil and Ibn al-Jawzi among the Hanbalis hold it recommended; most Hanbalis hold that leaving it is better. Treatment with what i…

59. Tatbib (medical treatment: the physician, his look, hire and liability)Draft

    MedicineTreatment

    Tatbib is medical treatment. Learning medicine is a communal duty, practising it is lawful, and it may be recommended by intention to follow the Prophet or to benefit Muslims, or obligatory where one physician is specifi…

60. Temperament (al-mizaj)Draft

    Medicine

    For Ibn Sina a temperament (mizaj) is a state that results from the interaction of opposite qualities, once its definition is grasped. The primary qualities in the elements are four: heat, cold, moisture and dryness. It …

61. Tiryaq (antidote compound, and whether it may be taken)Draft

    Drugs

    Tiryaq is a medicine used against poison, of several kinds, and it may contain viper flesh. The Hanbalis do not allow eating or drinking it when the flesh of a viper is in it, since the flesh is forbidden and no forbidde…

62. The great plague of Cairo, 848 AHDraft

    Medicine

    In 848 came the great plague at Cairo, more than a thousand carried out each day.

63. Egypt's famine and epidemic, 695Draft

    Medicine

    The year five and ninety opened, with the people of Egypt in severe dearth and extreme epidemic, so that they ate carrion. In a single day one thousand five hundred funerals were carried out, and they dug great pits and …

64. The general famine and plague of 448Draft

    Medicine

    In 448 Egypt saw severe drought and rampant plague while Iraq was awash with strife, fear and looting from Tughril Beg's bands, the Bedouin and al-Basasiri; famine and pestilence struck until people ate carrion — a makuk…

65. The plague in Fars and three cometsDraft

    Medicine

    In 299 word came of a plague in Fars that killed seven thousand; three comets appeared in Ramadan and Dhu'l-Qa'da — in Leo, in the east, in Scorpio — lingering days then fading; al-Muqtadir turned on Ibn al-Furat, seized…

66. Ibn al-Nafis becomes Chief Physician of Egypt and personal physician of Baybars, c. 658/1260

    Medicine

    Headship of medicine in Egypt came to rest with him: he was given the post of Chief Physician of Egypt and became the personal physician of sultan Baybars. He also lectured on Shafi'i law at the Masruriyya madrasa, where…

67. Ibn al-Nafis settles in Cairo and joins the Nasiri hospital, 633/1235

    Medicine

    In 633/1235 Ibn al-Nafis moved to Cairo and joined the Nasiri hospital, becoming its head and a professor in its medical school; the Encyclopaedia confirms the move to Cairo at an unrecorded date, that he presumably work…

68. Ibn al-Nafis studies medicine under Muhadhdhib al-Din al-Dakhwar at Damascus, before 628/1230

    Medicine

    Ibn al-Nafis studied medicine under the shaykh Muhadhdhib al-Din al-Dakhwar, Damascus's shaykh of medicine and endower of the physicians' madrasa in the old goldsmiths' quarter, and he excelled in the craft and in treatm…

69. The Black Death takes Ibn Khaldun's parents in Tunis

    Medicine

    In 1349 the Black Death struck Tunis and took both of Ibn Khaldun's parents.

70. Ibn Rushd becomes the caliph's physician (1182)Draft

    Medicine

    In 1182 Ibn Rushd succeeded Ibn Ṭufayl as physician to the caliph Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf, and to his son Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb in 1184.

71. Ibn Sina enters Buyid service at Rayy

    Medicine

    In about 1014 Ibn Sina went to Rayy and entered the service of the Buyid amir Majd al-Dawla and his mother Sayyida Shirin as court physician.

72. The Incident of the Poisoned Sheep at KhaybarDraft

    Prophetic medicineDrugs

    Following the conquest of Khaybar, Zaynab bint al-Harith (wife of Sallam ibn Mishkam) sent the Prophet a roasted sheep heavily laced with poison; upon chewing a morsel, the Prophet spat it out stating that the bone infor…

73. The dosing of the Prophet during his illnessDraft

    Prophetic medicineMedicine

    During the Prophet's illness, a group of his wives and some Muslim women, among them Asma' bint Umays, gathered with al-Abbas present and agreed to dose him; al-Abbas said 'I will dose him'; they did; when he came round …

74. Completion of the Mansuri maristan in Cairo, 683/1284

    Medicine

    In 683/1284 the Mansuri hospital endowed by sultan al-Malik al-Mansur Qalawun was completed in Cairo. Ibn al-Nafis, to whom the headship of medicine in Egypt had come, died four years later leaving his house, fortune and…

75. The Plague of 819 AHDraft

    Medicine

    819 opened with dearth and plague still mounting in Egypt and Tripoli — it was said ten thousand died at Tripoli in ten days, that of Isfahan's people only the rare survived, and that Fez counted thirty-six thousand dead…