This article introduces my readers to Islamic Medicine, and draws distinctions between Prophetic Medicine, or the healing lore of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and the broader field of Unani Tibb, or Graeco-Arabic Medicine.
Introduction: Religion and Culture, Civilization and Worldview
There have been certain people on the internet in recent years who have sought to promote the Graeco-Arabic system of medicine, otherwise known as Unani Tibb, in a religious manner, by putting the religious power and authority of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) behind it. These internet influencers have, of course, been Muslims. And many in their audiences who they have sought to attract have been Muslims as well. While there is essentially nothing wrong with using a religious or spiritual angle to promote holistic healing, the net effect, I feel, has been a religious “muddying of the waters” to make all those who are interested in Unani Tibb to think that it is an exclusively religious or Islamic thing, and has no role or purpose outside of the Islamic religion. But is this actually true? In this blog posting, we will be taking a deeper look at this connection between Graeco-Arabic Medicine, or Unani Tibb, and the Islamic civilization that cultivated, nurtured and furthered classical Greek Medicine after the fall of the Roman Empire in an effort to gain some differentiation and clarity on the whole phenomenon.
At the outset, I want to affirm that this blog posting will be written in a spirit of thanks and gratitude – not only to the Islamic religion and the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), but also to the broader cultural and social phenomenon of Islamic civilization, within which classical Greek Medicine could find a home or safe haven within which it could grow, flourish and progress. While Christian Europe was lost in the Dark Ages, Islamic civilization took care that classical science and learning, which includes not only medicine, but also philosophy and all the other natural sciences as well, were preserved for posterity, and did not die out. Although religious extremists and fanatics can be found within both the Christian and Muslim religions, many have observed that Christianity has been a religion which, by its very nature, has tended to promote a lot of magical or superstitious thinking. The religion of Islam, on the other hand, has tended to be a lot more friendly and receptive to science, reason, and learning in general, and has not been so prone to ignorance and superstition. I realize that I may have offended the religious sensibilities of many Christians here, but so be it.
An interesting or distinctive feature of the Graeco-Arabic system of traditional medicine is that it lies at the confluence of three great religious and spiritual traditions: the Greek, or Greco-Roman; the Christian; and the Islamic. Although all know that classical Greek, or Greco-Roman religion was decidedly polytheistic, it got more monotheistic, or monistic, as the tradition evolved. Although Christianity and Islam are usually lumped together as monotheistic religions, the truth is that Islam, like Judaism, is more purely monotheistic than Christianity, due to the latter’s divinization of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and its Trinitarian or three-in-one conception of the Godhead. But even though Greco-Roman civilization was basically polytheistic in its spiritual orientation, Galen, known to Muslims as Jalinoos, was a sworn monotheist. It is often said that Galen’s monotheism greatly enhanced his acceptance by Islamic scholars and physicians. And Buqrat is the name that Muslims give to Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, who is credited and revered for taking medicine out of the realm of magic and superstition and establishing it on a firm foundation of science and reason. The great reverence that Islamic scholars and physicians have for these Greco-Roman forebears is distinct and palpable.
A Clarification, or Definition of Terms
At the outset, it also helps to define the various terms we will be using as we discuss the whole tradition of Islamic Medicine, from the secular at one end of the spectrum or polarity to the sacred or religious at the other end. It helps to know exactly what we are talking about. In doing this, we will be going, in stages, from the secular to the religious.
Unani Tibb is, quite literally, the Arabic translation of “Greek Medicine”. Unani is Arabic for “Ionian”, or Greek, whereas Tibb is the Arabic word for “medicine”, which literally means, “Nature”, just as does the Greek word Physis, from which we get our word “physician”, which is a doctor, or practitioner of medicine. In Greek Medicine, the term Physis also refers to an individual’s constitution, that whole which is greater than the sum of its constituent parts, which the master physician treats in a comprehensive and holistic manner. And so, Unani Tibb literally means, “Greek Medicine”; this term or designation is religiously open or neutral, and lies at the most secular end of the spectrum. Since the Arabs and Muslims took over classical Greek Medicine after the fall of the Roman Empire, Unani Tibb is also called Graeco-Arabic Medicine.
Prophetic Medicine refers specifically to that body of health and healing lore that is connected with the Prophet Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Him!) and the Sunnah, or body of religious lore and traditions that have grown up around him. In Islamic circles, this is also referred to as Hikmat, a term that is derived from the Hebrew word for Wisdom, which is Chokmah. Health, healing and medicine were major concerns for the founding prophet of Islam, as this extensive body of health and healing lore makes clear.
Visiting India to Study Unani Medicine
After first setting up my Greek Medicine website in Romania, and after my website had gained somewhat of a visible presence on the internet, I was invited to India to be the keynote speaker at a conference on Unani Medicine at Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, which is a city not far from New Delhi, the nation’s capital. It was quite an adventure for me, and a great chance to connect with others in the Greek / Unani Medicine field. I also made frequent visits to the headquarters of CCRUM (The Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine), to discuss things and form relationships with certain members of the staff. One of the things they really made clear to me is that there is indeed a difference between Unani Tibb and Islamic or Prophetic Medicine. Prophetic Medicine, they told me, was closely tied to the religion of Islam and the medical and healing lore of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). In addition, they told me that Unani Tibb, with its secular orientation, was a lot more open and eclectic; as evidence of this fact, they told me that there were many more items in the Unani Materia Medica than the relatively limited number of herbs and remedies recommended by the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). I also found this to be true from my personal experience as well. For example, the Ayurvedic Guggulu formula Yogaraj Guggulu, which is so effective for treating various forms of arthritis, had been incorporated into the Unani pharmacopeia as well; when I checked the list of ingredients in the formula from both the Ayurvedic and Unani pharmacopeias, I found that the ingredients were identical. This indeed shows that the Unani system of medicine has been quite open and eclectic, incorporating local medicines and healing resources wherever it went, in whatever lands it found a home in.
I also visited Jamia Hamdard University, a leading Muslim university in Delhi and home to a major college of Unani Medicine. I bought their translations of the various volumes of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine that they had published. I also sat in on some Unani Medicine classes while I was there, and spoke with some of their professors. My conversations with them soon revealed to me that, while all of the professors were Muslims, some of them were quite rigid, conservative and dogmatic in their approach to Islam, whereas other professors there were quite liberal and open minded in their religious and spiritual views. Upon reflecting on this situation, I realized that this mirrors quite well the situation in Christianity today, with a great polarization between liberal or progressive believers, sects and denominations of the religion versus conservative and fundamentalist ones. Two sides of the religion coin, I realized – liberal versus conservative, and it didn’t really matter whether you were talking about the Islamic or the Christian religion. I also learned, in a conversation with two elderly Muslim gentlemen, that most Indians, or natives of the Indian subcontinent, were actually against the partition of India along Hindu / Muslim lines – that was mainly a British thing, they told me, a kind of divide and conquer mechanism to keep their former colonial subjects in check within the larger British Commonwealth of nations. Yes, that visit to India was a real eye opener in many ways.
Historically speaking, Unani Tibb, or Graeco-Arabic Medicine, first came to the Indian sub-continent in the days of the Delhi Sultanate (1206 – 1526 AD), when Islamic rule was first established. The tradition continued to be practiced, and to flourish, under the Moghul emperors. Although Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, as well as other medical luminaries of the Golden Age of Islam hailed from Central Asia, political turbulence and instability led practitioners of Unani Medicine to wander in search of a safe haven to practice their healing art, which they found in the Indian subcontinent. In the days of the British Raj, the British discouraged the practice of indigenous Indian systems of traditional healing, which included both Ayurveda as well as Unani Tibb. During the days of the Indian independence movement, Hakim Ajmal Khan was not only a champion of Indian independence and a close associate of Gandhi in the political sphere, but was also a champion of the two indigenous traditional healing systems of the Indian subcontinent, believing that they should work together, like a pair of eyes. And so, he established a college teaching both Aurveda and Unani Tibb in Delhi. Geographically speaking, it comes as no surprise that Delhi, as well as the nearby cities of Aligarh and Lucknow, are important centers of activity in the field of Unani Medicine. Other large metropolitan centers having a large population of Muslims, such as Chennai (formerly Madras) and Hyderabad (often called ‘Cyberabad’ for its flourishing IT industry), as well as Bangalore, are other prominent centers for Unani Medicine in south India.
Unani Tibb, or Graeco-Arabic Medicine: An Eclectic and Cosmopolitan Healing Tradition
One of the most unique and distinguishing characteristics of Unani Tibb, or Graeco-Arabic Medicine as a healing tradition is its open, eclectic and cosmopolitan nature. As I said previously, it has its roots in three different religious and spiritual traditions: the Greek or Hellenistic, as well as Christianity, and finally Islam. As the Byzantine Empire, as the heirs to ancient Rome, gradually waned and fell, classical Greek Medicine was taken over by the Muslim Arabs and Persians, who were not content to simply preserve it, but who nurtured it and added to it over the years. In the eleventh century, Avicenna, the Prince of Physicians, who is also known as the Father of Modern Medicine, wrote his magnum opus, his Canon of Medicine, which became a standard teaching text in the European medical schools that were established during the High Middle Ages. From one perspective, the Crusades were one colossal military misadventure, but on a more positive note, this era opened the door for Islamic science and medicine to become better known, and to make its way back to Europe. The old Greco-Roman masters of medicine, Hippocrates and Galen, had their names changed, and came back to Europe wearing turbans.
When Shakespeare wrote his great dramas in Renaissance Europe, classical Greek notions of humor and temperament, brought back into Europe through the likes of Avicenna, Rhazes and Averroes, were all the rage, and were so well known that the Bard made frequent allusions to them in his plays. In his play, Henry IV, for instance, all four temperaments are represented, with each getting a major character of its own. Perhaps the best known and loved of these characters is the Phlegmatic Falstaff, who later on got his very own play, The Merry Wives of Windsor. When the Sanguine Prince Hal greets Falstaff early on in the play, he addresses him thusly:
Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sac, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know…
Sounds pretty Phlegmatic, doesn’t it? Another very aptly named character from Henry IV is called Sir Harry Hotspur – yes, you guessed it – his temperament is decidedly Choleric. Perhaps the most famous Melancholic character from Shakespeare’s dramas is Hamlet, the gloomy and morose Prince of Denmark, who delivers a long soliloquy on death and what might lie beyond. For more information on Shakespeare and the Four Humors, check out the link below:
https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/W-MM-xUAAAinxgs3
Another herbalist and natural healer who was an heir to the Greco-Roman or Galenic tradition of natural healing is the beloved seventeenth century Englishman, Nicholas Culpeper, who was the author of Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, which is still in print today. In the more complete and expanded edition of his herbal, Culpeper includes a bunch of other goodies in addition to a description of the medicinal plants of his native England: Galen’s Key to Physick, which is a primer on the basic principles of Galenic herbal medicine, as well as a discourse on the basics of Medical Astrology, following the classical Greek precepts of humor and temperament, and The English Physician, which is a work authored in a spirit of medical populism, to make known all the arcane secrets and Materia Medica of the medical profession of his day. Also included in the expanded edition of his herbal is an extensive compendium of the traditional herbal medicines of his day, with many drawn from classical Greco-Roman sources. Culpeper also mentions the Three Myrobalans – Emblic, Beleric and Chebulic; these are nothing other than the three ingredients of Ayurvedic Triphala, or the powder of the three medicinal fruits: Amla, or Amalaki; Behada, or Bibhitaki; and Harada, or Haritaki, which is in popular use today. Truly, Culpeper is a rich case study of the great eclecticism of the Graeco-Arabic based medicine of his day.
A Closer Look at Prophetic Medicine
Prophetic Medicine, or Tibb al Nabawi, is a body of healing knowledge or advice on illnesses, treatment and hygiene that grew up out of the Hadith, or body of sayings and traditions connected to the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). It grew up within the context of, and has as its theoretical underpinnings the Galenic humoral medicine of the day, which existed in the Arab world before the advent of Islam. Also contained within this body of knowledge and healing lore are discussions of medical ethics and the hallmarks of a good physician. Some of the maladies discussed and dealt with in Prophetic Medicine include fevers, plague and leprosy and poisonous bites; protection from night flying insects and the evil eye; and the Prophet’s instructions for coitus and theories of embryology as well. The authors and compilers of the manuals of Prophetic Medicine were religious clerics who explicated these Prophetic traditions, and were not physicians, as were its practitioners. Exactly how much of this healing lore is due to divine revelation and how much consists of traditional folk practices that were handed down to the Prophet Mohammad is a matter open for debate. – 1.
As is to be expected, Prophetic Medicine is infused with a heavy dose of religious faith. Perhaps the best known healing saying or maxim of Prophetic Medicine is the following:
Make use of medical treatment, for Allah has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it, with the exception of one disease, namely death.
– Abu Dawood, Sunan Abu Dawood
In making this declaration, the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) was actually encouraging the progress of medical study and research; this declaration can be seen in the light of Jesus Christ’s admonition of “seek and ye shall find” from the Christian gospels. The remedy is out there, just waiting to be discovered! – 1.
When it comes to the herbs and remedies discussed in the manuals on Prophetic Medicine, perhaps the best known is the Black Seed (Nigella sativa), also known as Black Cumin seed. The Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is reputed to have said that within the Black Seed lies the remedy for every illness known to man except death itself. To treat pains in the legs, the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) put on an external poultice of Henna. He even advised some who were ailing to drink camel’s milk and urine to restore their health and wellbeing. Honey was another natural food and medicine that was held in exceedingly high esteem by the Prophet. – 1. When it comes to books on Prophetic Medicine, there was a very important and major work in that regard written in the thirteenth century by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, which is now available in English in various modern versions or translations, titled variously as The Prophetic Medicine and Healing with the Medicine of the Prophet. You can find them on Amazon.com, as well as other books on Prophetic Medicine, just by searching for books on that subject. – 2.
I do not claim to be an expert on Prophetic Medicine; neither am I a Muslim, so in a very real sense, I am but an outsider looking in. But reading the above book should be a good start in educating oneself about the Medicine of the Prophet. Whether or not you are a Muslim, or even open to or interested in Islam, I would suggest that you take a closer look at Prophetic Medicine by reading the above recommended book. As natural healers, we are always looking to expand our repertoire of good, reliable remedies, and if a remedy works well, it really doesn’t matter from which source or tradition it comes from, and this even includes religious traditions as well. Open your heart and expand your mind as you seek new horizons of natural healing!
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