Tuḥfat al-Mawdūd — an Islamic Childrearing Manual from the Fourteenth Century

Abstract

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya of Damascus (1292–1350), a Ḥanbali theologian and jurisconsult,¹ the most famous disciple of Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya, is known to have been well-versed in all the main Islamic disciplines, namely, Qur’ānic exegesis, ḥadīth, jurisprudence, law and mystical-Ṣūfi theory.² Like many other Muslim scholars in the Middle Ages, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya was also interested in medicine, but his knowledge in the field is not confined to those ḥadīth reports dealing with health and medicine attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad. It was also derived, although indirectly, from Hellenistic sources.³ There is no indication that Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya studied medicine in any formal educational framework; it is likely that, in this field, he was self-taught, the most common way of learning at the time, as far as medical studies were concerned.⁴ Be that as it may, the results are rather impressive.⁵