Abstract
For historians concerned with Arab physicians and the place occupied by them in Muslim society, the ancient biographical dictionaries are sources of great interest. Abundantly present in the early classical Arabic literature, these dictionaries devote biographical and bibliographical notes to the most famous scholars of their time, a sort of Who’s Who of those days. The first dictionaries, which deal with transmitters and specialists in religious traditions, were prepared for the purpose of religious studies. Most of the books have to do with the political and religious environment of a region or town; in his excellent thesis on the Nishapur patricians Richard Bulliet shows how such works may contribute to social history.1 A few of the dictionaries deal exclusively with scientific spheres; such is the case with the one written by Ibn al-Qifṭī, the bibliophile discussed in the following pages.
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Notes
R.W. Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge, Mass. 1972). This study is actually based on two biographical dictionaries, which enabled the author to describe great patrician families: those who held the power, the prestige, and the wealth. On methodological matters, see also
Bulliet, “A Quantitative Approach to Medieval Muslim Biographies”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 13 (1970) 195–211.
Of the twenty-six history and biography books he is said to have written, the titles of which have been preserved, only two have reached us. Cf. C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, vol. I (Leiden 1943), pp. 396ff. and Suppl. I (Leiden 1937), pp. 559ff; Encyclopédie de l’Islam, III, 864.
We do not have Ibn al-Qifṭī’s original work anymore, only the abridged version established by his disciple al-Zawzanī as early as 1249 under the title al-Muntakhabāt al-multaqaṭāt min kitāb ta’rīkh al-ḥukamā’ (Selections from the book of the history of scholars). Cf. M. Nallino, Raccolta di scritti editi e inediti, vol. V (Rome 1944), pp. 128–37. This text was edited by J. Lippert on the basis of a study initiated by
A. Müller: Ibn al-Qifṭī’s Ta’rīkh al-ḥ ukamā’ (Leipzig 1903).
See the critical remarks by M. J. De Goeje in Deutsche Literaturzeitung 24 (1903) 1526–30, and by
H. Suter in Bibliotheca mathematica 3rd ser. 4 (1903) 293–302. The present study uses Lippert’s edition.
The distribution of the disciplines practised by the scholars of the Islamic period who are included in Ibn al-Qifṭī’s notes puts medicine in first place (mentioned 136 times), then the pair astronomy-astrology (106 times), mathematics (53 times), philosophy (43 times), literature (30 times), translation (22 times), and finally religious studies (9 times) and chemistry (4 times). One must bear in mind that the same scholar often distinguished himself in several areas. See F. Micheau, “Hommes de sciences au prisme d’Ibn al-Qifṭī”, Cahiers de la Méditerranée 37 (1988) 81–106 (Actes du colloque “Intellectuels et militants dans le monde islamique”, Grasse, 1986).
However, this form of education drawn out of books, so emphasized by Ibn al-Qiftṭī, is not the only path followed. See F. Micheau, “La Formation des médecins arabes au Proche-Orient (Xe-XIIIe siècles)”, in Les Entrées dans la vie: Initiations et apprentissages, Actes du XIIe congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public, Nancy, 1981 (Nancy 1982), pp. 105–25. See also G. Leiser, “Medical Education in Islamic Lands from the Seventh to the Fourteenth Century”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 38 (1983) 48–75.
Besides the examples already mentioned, Ibn al-Qiftṭī relates the famous anecdote about the examination to which Sinān ibn Thābit is said to have submitted all the physicians in Iraq in the year 931. Among them was an old illiterate man …. Concerning the real significance of this episode, see F. Micheau, “La Formation”, p. 116, and M. Dols, Medieval Islamic Medicine: Ibn Riḍwān’s Treatise “On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt” (Berkeley 1984), p. 32.
The oriental Arabic chronicles often show, in matters of western history, similar deficiencies. Cf. Cl. Cahen, “L’Historiographie arabe: Des origines au VIIe s. H.”. Arabica 33 (1986) 133–98.
We are familiar with the famous eulogy delivered in favour of the Arabic language by al-Bīrūnī, a scholar from eastern Iran whose mother tongue was nevertheless a Persian dialect: “Sciences from all over the world have been translated into the language of the Arabs, they were made more attractive, they penetrated the hearts, and the beauty of the language flowed in the veins and the arteries …. I say this according to my own experience … and I confess that I would rather be insulted in Arabic than praised in Persian”. The passage is taken from the preface to the Kitāb al-Sayḍana, trans. into French by M. Meyerhof in Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte 19 (1936–37) 33–34 and 22 (1939–40) 144–45.
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© 1992 Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
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Micheau, F. (1992). Great Figures in Arabic Medicine According to Ibn al-Qifṭῑ. In: Campbell, S., Hall, B., Klausner, D. (eds) Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21882-0_13
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