The Medicine

24. Ṭibb

What happened

From the 8th century, a great translation movement carried the Greek medical corpus into Arabic — Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides — together with Persian and Indian material.

And it did not stay translation.

• Al-Rāzī (Rhazes, c. 865–925): clinical observations, the first clear clinical distinction of smallpox and measles, and a work of Doubts about Galen — that is, explicit criticism of authority
• Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, 980–1037): The Canon of Medicine, which became the main textbook even in Europe for centuries
• Al-Zahrāwī (c. 936–1013): surgical work with illustration of instruments — foundational for surgery
• Ibn al-Nafīs (c. 1213–1288): described the pulmonary circulation — that blood passes from the right to the left ventricle via the lungs and not through the interventricular septum

The last is significant: he explicitly corrected Galen, three centuries before it was reformulated in Europe.

And the institutions

The bīmāristān — hospitals with department distinction, outpatient clinics, pharmacies, libraries and teaching — operated in major cities, funded by charitable endowments (waqf), open regardless of religion and financial status.

And there were early forms of physician licensing.

The theoretical framework — and the honesty

It was, at its core, Galenic: four humours, four qualities, krasis, diet.

That is, it inherited the error too. Bloodletting was widely practised, with the same consequences.

And when the European system was overturned by the data of the 16th–17th century, this one was too.

What stands is what stands from the Greek tradition: the method, clinical observation, recording, the critique of authority — and the very chain of transmission without which the European material would have been lost.

25. Ṭibb nabawī

“Prophetic medicine” — and here the greatest directness of the document is required.

What it is

Collections of medical recommendations drawn from the tradition of the Prophet’s sayings and acts. As a literary genre it was formed later, from the 13th–14th century.

The content includes: honey, black cumin (Nigella sativa), citronella and other plants, dates, dietary rules, and ḥijāma — cupping with small incisions.

And public-health principles that deserve explicit mention: the instruction that no one should enter or leave an area with an epidemic is, essentially, a description of quarantine, and is early.

And now the problem

The issue is not the historical texts. It is their contemporary commercialisation.

There is today an extensive market that:

• Sells black cumin as a cure “for every illness except death” — a phrase taken from the tradition and used as a medical claim
• Promotes ḥijāma with claims for cancer, infertility, autoimmune and psychiatric disorders
• And, at its worst, discourages conventional treatment

The harm is documented

• Delay of diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other serious diseases, with documented cases of death
• Infections from non-sterilised ḥijāma, with documented transmissions of blood-borne infections
• Interactions of herbal preparations with pharmaceutical treatment
• And the non-standardised recommendation of commercial products

The scientific picture, fairly

Black cumin has indeed been studied, and there are preliminary findings for mild effects on some metabolic markers. The studies are mostly small and heterogeneous, and nothing supports the circulating claims.

Honey has documented use in topical wound healing and some effectiveness in nocturnal cough in children. That is all.

For ḥijāma, reviews find low-quality data and permit no conclusions beyond possible short-term effect on pain, consistent with non-specific mechanisms.

And the reaction from within

And it is important.

Muslim physicians, religious councils and organisations have issued clear positions:

• That seeking medical treatment is an obligation, on the basis of the tradition itself
• That withholding effective treatment from a patient is a transgression
• And that the prophetic recommendations were not formulated as an exclusive medical system

And there is the strong internal argument: the idea that the body is amāna (chapter 3) imposes its correct care — that is, the theological basis for accepting effective medicine exists within the system itself.

The summary

The historical material is historical material. Its conversion into an exclusive therapeutic system is a contemporary phenomenon, commercially driven, and has killed people.

It is the same structure we saw with bloodletting and with the modern wellness market: a tradition with real content, transformed into a product with absolute claims.