History as Prelude by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739168158
Publisher: Lexington Books

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Doctors without Borders

Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean World

Kathryn A. Miller

In 940 CE, emissaries from the Byzantine court in Constantinople presented the Caliph ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III with a coveted copy of Dioscorides’ Materia medica. The Caliph’s Jewish physician, Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūt (910–975 CE) immediately arranged for a collaborative translation of the Greek text into Arabic with the Christian monk, Nicholas. Delighted by Ḥasdai’s initiative, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān entrusted his court doctor with influential responsibilities as caliphal diplomat and customs official.

Such is one example of many scholarly enterprises involving the cooperation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the medieval Mediterranean. Medical scholars, physicians, and Caliphs were eager to get their hands on “Greek medicine.” The Cordovan Caliph ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (912–961 CE) and his successor al-Ḥakam II (961–976 CE) generously patronized learning in their courts. Their agents scoured the Islamic world for books and returned to Cordova with ancient texts as well as the latest advances in medicine. The flow of traffic between western Islamic Spain and the eastern Mediterranean facilitated intellectual contact, and physicians made it their business to exchange information and cultivate professional contacts.

The collaborative activities of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim medical scholars had begun in earnest in ninth-century Baghdad.1 In 820 CE, the caliph al-Ma’mūn founded the Bait al-Ḥikma (house of wisdom), appointing Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq, a Nestorian Christian, to direct the translation of Greek works of philosophy, science, and medicine into Arabic. Over the next two centuries, medical scholars worked to absorb, refine, and expand upon the Greek corpus, especially Galen’s and Hippocrates’ works.2 Specialties developed, and surgery, ophthalmology, and pharmaceutical medicine emerged as important subdisciplines.

By the late tenth century, the challenge to medical scholars in Islamic lands, however, was no longer translation. The corpus of Galen and Hippocrates was widely available in Arabic. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim physicians produced their scholarship in that language. Medicine had developed and diversified, and the pharmaceutical field had become a thriving industry, in particular. Medical scholars were now compelled to think seriously about the consequences of their scientific advances. As scholars continued to revise and expand the authoritative corpus of medical knowledge, many became concerned about maintaining standards. Pedagogy and the contents of the medical curriculum became objects of an intense debate in physician circles. How should physicians be properly trained? How should the activities of pharmacists and apothecaries be supervised? How could society protect itself from incompetence and fraud? In other words, by the tenth century, Arabic medicine faced the predictable effects of progress.

This chapter explores how medieval physicians perceived and confronted such challenges, posed as they were by an increasingly diversified health field. Although important political, social, and economic factors in Islamic society significantly influenced how medical practices developed between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, the emphasis will be on the professional collaboration and personal friendships that developed in the eastern and western Mediterranean. Together, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars debated the basic criteria by which they would determine the standards of medical practice. They discussed regulations that needed to be instituted to insure that physicians served the good of their communities.

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