Islamic Medicine

Popular medicine was sanctioned by custom, a wide consensus from below, not by any religious, judicial, or scientific authority. This medical folklore in itself took many forms and was the outcome of diverse pre-Muslim cultural traditions (such as those of Arabs, Greeks, Persians, and Berbers) and differing ecological environments with their distinctive medical problems as well as flora and fauna from which medication was prepared.

By contrast, what Muslims call prophetic medicine (al-Tibb al-Nabawi) does not rely on custom. Instead it originated from (and therefore is sanctioned by) the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. These sayings, in which Muhammad gave his opinions on medical practices, constituted the basis for a distinctive medical system from the ninth century onward. The Shiites entrust the imams, the descendants of Muhammad's family and therefore the spiritual leaders of the community, with extraordinary healing abilities as part of their supernatural attributes; thus in Shiism the role of Muhammad as healer is downplayed. But in general the field of prophetic medicine engaged many of the most renowned scholars of their time (for example, the Egyptian Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, d. 1505). Among the population at large, medical rites and practices were connected with live and dead saints. Certain individuals were (and still are) believed to possess extraordinary healing powers, so that visiting them or their graves was believed to be medically beneficial.

Mechanical medicine, based on the humoralism inherited from Greek antiquity, constitutes the third tradition. This medicine is based on the well-known idea of four elements: a physical and philosophical metatheory according to which everything in nature is a mixture of fire, earth, air, and water. Each element embodies two of the four qualities of hot, cold, dry, and moist. The human body was understood to correspond with this model, because it is a microcosmos of nature. The body consists therefore of four humors, or fluids, the physiological blocks of the body: blood (air), phlegm (water), black bile (earth), and yellow bile (fire). In case of illness, which is a state of imbalance in the body, it was up to the humoralist physician to diagnose which of the four humors was in excess or deficient. The physician then proceeded to recommend a course of treatment, usually by diet, to correct or counterbalance the offending humor. Excess in black bile, for example, known to be cold and dry, necessitated adding warmth and moisture artificially. This tradition asserted its legitimacy by drawing on scientific treatises of the sages of antiquity, as mediated through the intellectual and literary discourses of famous Muslim medical figures.