Great Arabian Physicians

In order to understand the place of the Arabs in medicine and in
science, a few words as to the rise of this people to political power,
and then to the cultivation of literature and of science, are necessary.
We hear of the Arabs as hireling soldiers fighting for others during the
centuries just after Christ, and especially in connection with the story
of the famous Queen Zenobia at Palmyra. After the destruction of this
city we hear nothing more of them until the time of Mohammed. During
these six and a half centuries there is little question of education of
any kind among them except that at the end of the sixth century, the
Persian King Chosroes I, who was much interested in medicine, encouraged
the medical school in Djondisabour, in Arabistan, founded at the end of
the fifth century by the Nestorian Christians, who continued as the
teachers there until it became one of the most important schools of the
East. It was here that the first Arab physicians were trained, and here
that the Christian physicians who practised medicine among the Arabs
were educated.

Among the Arabs themselves, before the time of Mohammed, there had been
very little interest in medicine. Gurlt notes that even the physician of
the Prophet himself was, according to tradition, a Christian.
Mohammed's immediate successors were not interested in education, and
their people mainly turned to Christian and Jewish physicians for
whatever medical treatment they needed. When the Caliphs came to be
rulers of the Mohammedan Empire, they took special pains to encourage
the study of philosophy and medicine; though dissection was forbidden by
the Koran, most of the other medical sciences, and especially botany and
all the therapeutic arts, were seriously cultivated.

Until the coming of Mohammed, the Arabs had been wandering tribes,
getting some fame as hireling soldiers, but now, under the influence of
a feeling of community in religion, and led by the military genius of
some of Mohammed's successors, whose soldiers were inspired by the
religious feelings of the sect, they made great conquests. The
Mohammedan Empire extended from India to Spain within a century after
Mohammed's death. Carthage was taken and destroyed, Constantinople was
threatened. In 661, scarcely forty years after the hegira or flight of
Mohammed, from which good Mohammedans date their era, the capital was
transferred from Medina to Damascus, to be transferred from here to
Bagdad just about a century later, where it remained until the Mongols
made an end of the Abbasside rulers about the middle of the thirteenth
century. At the beginning the followers of Mohammed were opposed to
knowledge and education of all kinds. Mohammed himself had but little.
According to tradition, he could not read or write. The story told with
regard to the Caliph Omar and the great library of Alexandria, seems to
have a foundation in reality, though such legends usually are not to be
taken literally. Certainly it represents the traditional view as to the
attitude of the earlier Moslem rulers to education. Omar was asked what
should be done with the more than two million volumes. He said that the
books in it either agreed with the Koran, or they did not. If they
agreed with it they were quite useless. If they did not, they were
pernicious. In either case, they should be done away with, because there
was an element of danger in them. Accordingly, the precious volumes that
had been accumulating for nearly ten centuries, served, it is said, to
heat the baths of Alexandria for some six months--probably the most
precious fuel ever used. Fortunately for posterity, the edict was not
quite as universal in its application as the story would indicate, and
exceptions were made for books of science.

In the course of their conquests, however, the Mohammedan Arabs captured
the Greek cities of Asia Minor. They were brought closely in contact
with Greek culture, Greek literature, and Greek thought. As has always
been the case, captive Greece took its captors captive. What happened to
the Romans earlier came to pass also among the Arabs. Inspired by Greek
philosophy, science, and literature, they became ardent devotees of
science and the arts. While not inventing or discovering anything new,
like the Romans they carried on the old. Damascus, Basra, Bagdad,
Bokhara, Samarcand all became centres of culture and of education. Large
sums were paid for Greek manuscripts, and for translations from them.
Under the famous Harun al-Raschid, at the end of the eighth century,
whose name is better known to us than that of any others, because of the
stories of his wandering by night among his people in order to see if
justice were done, three hundred scholars were sent at the cost of the
Caliph to the various parts of the world in order to bring back
treasures of science, and especially of geography and medicine. It is an
interesting historical reflection that the Japanese and Chinese are
doing the same thing now.

The Arabs were very much taken by the philosophy of Aristotle, and it
became the foundation of all their education. Greek thought, as always,
inspired its students to higher things. Soon everywhere in the dominions
of the Caliphs, philosophy, science, art, literature, and education
nourished. Medicine was taken up with the other sciences and cultivated
assiduously. Freind, in his Historia Medicinae, says that the writings
of the old Greeks which treated of medicine were saved from destruction
with the other books at Alexandria, for the desire of health did not
have less strength among the Arabs than among other nations. Since these
books taught them how to preserve health, and were not otherwise
contrary to the laws of the Prophet, that served to bring about their
preservation. Freind also calls attention to the fact that grammars and
books which treated of the science of language were likewise saved from
destruction. Besides the library, the Arabs, after their conquest of
Alexandria in the eighth century, came under the influence of the
university still in existence there.

In the West, in Spain, the Arabs enjoyed the same advantages as regards
contact with culture and education as their conquest of the Eastern
cities and Alexandria brought them in the East. While it is not
generally realized, Spain was, as we have pointed out, the province of
the Roman Empire in the West that advanced most in culture before the
breaking up of the Empire. The Silver Age of Latin literature owes all
of its geniuses to Spain. Lucan, the Senecas, Martial, Quintilian, are
all Spaniards. Spain itself was a most flourishing province, and under
the Spanish Caesars, from the end of the first to about the end of the
second century, increased rapidly in population. Spain was the leader in
these prosperous times, and the tradition of culture maintained itself.
When Spain became Christian the first great Christian poet, Prudentius,
born about the middle of the fourth century, came from there. He has
been called the Horace and Virgil of the Christians.

The coming down of the barbarians from the North disturbed Spain's
prosperity and the peace and culture of her inhabitants, but it should
not be forgotten that the first medieval popularization of science, a
sort of encyclopedia of knowledge, the first of its kind after that of
Pliny in the classical period, came from St. Isidore of Seville, a
Spanish bishop.

There has been considerable tendency to insist that Spanish culture and
intellectuality owe nearly all to the presence of the Moors in Spain.
This can only be urged, however, by those who know nothing at all of the
Spanish Caesars, the place of Spain in the history of the Roman Empire,
and the continuance of the culture that then reached a climax of
expression during succeeding centuries. On the contrary, the Moors who
came to Spain owe most of their tendency to devote themselves to culture
and education to the state of affairs existent in Spain when they came.
There is no doubt that they raised standards of education and of culture
above the level to which they had sunk under the weight of the invading
barbarians from the North, and Spain owes much to the wise ruling and
devotion to the intellectual life of her Moorish invaders. All the
factors, however, must be taken together in order to appreciate properly
the conditions which developed under the Arabs in both the East and the
West. The Arabs invented little that was new in science or philosophy;
they merely carried on older traditions. It is for that that the modern
time owes them a great debt of gratitude.

Next: Rhazes
Previous: Mainmonides

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