Views of Muslim Scholars on the Source of Medicine

Abstract

How medicine emerged has been discussed and debated throughout history as it is today. There are two different views on the origin of medicine in the pre-modern scientific world. According to the unprevailing one, the foundations of medicine are based only on experience, that is, on experimentation and observation. According to the common view in civilizations before Islam and in the Islamic period, the basis of medicine is based on divine sources. It is seen that almost all Muslim scholars are of this opinion. Proponents of the latter did not reject experimentation and observation, on the contrary, they emphasized its importance. However, they discussed experiment and observation by comparing and contrasting the teaching based on divine knowledge.

In this direction, it is stated in the sources that divine information about medicine is obtained in different ways. Types such as revelation, inspiration, dreams, information learned from the animal instinct are among the ways mentioned. Scholars who wrote about this subject in the ancient Islamic world often refer to the civilizations before them; especially Ancient Greece, since the issue is related to the history of medicine. In addition to these references, some scholars have also put forward some rational justifications for the necessity of divine knowledge. In addition, Islamic theologians used this general acceptance in the scientific world as evidence for the proof of prophethood.

In this paper, we discuss the views on the origin of medicine in the pre-modern scientific world and examined many important sources in order to reflect the general acceptance. Instead of every work we have accessed, we have mostly covered the works of authoritative scholars in our article. While we mainly use the sources of medicine and history of science, we also scanned the works of leading scholars in which they can deal with this subject. We could not process much data under the second main title of our article, “Those who think that medicine in the Islamic world is of human origin”. Because in the pre-modern Islamic world, the opinion that medicine is based only on experimentation and observation is almost non-existent. In addition, we have briefly discussed the views of Islamic theologians under a separate heading, as we find them important. Since our subject is the pre-modern Islamic world, the works we study are generally Arabic works since the language of science in the classical Islamic world is predominantly Arabic. We also scanned the Ottoman works that we could reach. Additionally, we took care to benefit from domestic and foreign sources of modern science and medicine history.

We researched the approaches of Islamic scholars to the subject, especially their views on the source of medicine, and the way they handled the subject, and made evaluations where we deem necessary. Sometimes, we found it sufficient to simply transfer without making an evaluation. Again, where necessary, we made direct quotations, not indirect ones. Being aware of those who are interested in the history of medicine and science, we tried to cite more than one source rather than being content with a single source on subjects that other researchers commonly known to the contrary. In widely known places, we were content with a single source. We have tried to draw attention to the leading information and to cite the sources for further research by discussing the important extensions of our main topic in the footnotes. In fact, we think that some footnotes that we could not include in the main text because they are not directly related to the subject, sometimes stand out from the main text in terms of being eye-opening. We have mostly taken the Turkish Diyanet Foundation’s Encyclopedia of Islam as a basis for the names and dates of the authors and book titles that we discussed in our study.

As far as we can determine, we have not come across a study that directly addresses this issue. In this context, we think that our study will contribute to the field and open up horizons for further studies, and that it is also important for researchers who do not have a history of medicine and science in the barber field. Again, we tried to refer to the findings that we came across while dealing with the subject and that we thought were erroneous.