Authority, Knowledge and Practice in Unani Tibb in India, c. 1890 -1930
Guy Nicolas Anthony Attewell
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy,
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Abstract
This thesis breaks away from the prevailing notion of unani tibb as a ‘system’ of medicine by drawing attention to some key arenas in which unani practice was reinvented in the early twentieth century. Specialist and non-specialist media have projected unani tibb as a seamless continuation of Galenic and later West Asian ‘Islamic’ elaborations. In this thesis unaniJibb in early twentieth-century India is understood as a loosely conjoined set of healing practices which all drew, to various extents, on the understanding of the body as a site for the interplay of elemental forces, processes and fluids (humours). The thesis shows that in early twentieth-century unani ///)/; the boundaries between humoral, moral, religious and biomedical ideas were porous, fracturing the realities of unani practice beyond interpretations of suffering derived from a solely humoral perspective. The principal objective of the thesis is to draw attention to the tensions manifest in different spheres of unani practice as certain practitioners reconfigured their knowledge and practices though the prisms of nationalist and communitarian politics, changing social and moral norms, the expanding use of print and colonial inspired models of legitimacy. These phenomena presented challenges to the authoritative practice of tibb as a local, family affair. Unani practitioners were forced to take stock of what they thought to be good, authentic and legitimate in order to represent this knowledge to the public on a vastly new scale; both to gain and maintain their trust and their custom, and in order to represent the credibility of their practices in new, less personalised administrative, judicial and political domains. The thesis emphasises the importance of the market in the reform of tibb during this time, an area which is especially important in the context of the collapse of courtly patronage for elite unani practice in most parts of India during the nineteenth century. The principal themes framed in this study are: plague and unani reform; legitimacy in relation to institutional and family practice; the emergence of tibb as a ‘national’ enterprise; new engagements with women and change in the treatment of certain women’s diseases; conceptualisations of male sexuality; and the role of the unani journal in the establishment of innovative practices and relationships with the public.
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Contents
List of Illustrations..............................................................................................................
Note on Romanisation.............................................................
Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................
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Chapter 1
Introduction. .............................................. .................................................................. 12
I. Beyond the Golden Age..........................................................................................15
II. The Question of System......................................................................................... 20
III. Arenas of Authority in Contexts of Unani Reform............................................... 28
IV. Institutions and Family Practices........................................................................... 32
V. Print, the Dynamic Profession and the Public.......................................................36
VI. Crisis and Reform.......................................................................
39
VII. Intimate Spheres of Authority; Women, Men and the Home............................... 42
VIII. Sources.................................................................................................................... 46
Chapter 2 Contesting Knowledges: Plague and the Dynamics of the Unani Profession.............49
I. Hakim Ajmal Khan’s Treatise al-Ta ( u n, a Vehicle for a Modernising
Agenda............................................................................................................
II. Social Pressures and the Contingency of Medical Knowledge:
55
Contagion, Segregation and Inoculation................................................................ 62
III. Plague and the Legitimacy of Unani Practice........................................................69 IV. Representing Knowledge: Hakim Altaf Hussain of Hyderabad on the
Plague............................................................................................................ ........74
V. Plague, Society and the Heavens: The Interface of Classical Tibb with
Popular Realms....................................................................................................... 80
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1. Plague as Punishment........................................................
80
2. Astral Emanations.......................................................................................85
VI. Adopting Germs..................................................................................................... 87
Chapter 3 Models of Authority: Assessing the Place of Institutions in the Unani Profession in Early Twentieth Century India, with Special Reference to Hyderabad.....................93
I. Unani Instruction in Nineteenth-Century India...................................................100 II. Emerging Institutions of Unani Tibb in North India............................................100
1. Unani Instruction and Colonial Objectives in the Punjab 2. Consolidating Tibb as Culture: Islamiya College, Lahore.......................103 3. Redefining Authenticity: The Madrasa Tibbiya, Delhi, and the
TakmTl at-Tibb, Lucknow.........................................................
104
III. The Tablb in Government Service, Hyderabad......................... ....................... 107
.
IV. The Nizam and Professional Mobilisation........................................................... 115
V. ‘Revival* and the Incongruity of the Institutional Model?.................................. 123 VI. Tazkirah Literature: Frameworks of Legitimation in the Self-
Representation of the Hakim................................................................................ 128
Chapter 4 DesTTibb: Reform and ‘National’ Medicine in Early Twentieth Century India.... 141
I. Unani Tibb, Ayurveda and the Agenda for Collaborative Action.......................145
1. A United Front.......................................................................................... 145
2. Challenging the Dichotomies: Muslim - Unani / Hindu - Ayurveda.... 151 3. Striving for Unity of Unani and Ayurveda, Widening the Rifts within
Unani..........................................................................................................158
II. The Medicinal Plants of India and the Revival of DesT Tibb............................... 164
1. Poor Quality Remedies and the Decline of Tibb..................................... 165
2. Exhibitions and Herbaria..........................................................................169
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3. Plant Directories and Collating Compendia of Remedies.......................170
III. Plants and the ‘Nation’ in the Unani Journal al-HaJam....................................... 177
Chapter 5 Treating Women: Women’s Engagement with Unani Tibb and its Engagement with
Women in Early Twentieth-Century India.................................................................184
I. Treating Women................................................................................................... 186
II. Islamic Reform and Unani Medicine for Women: The Bihishti Zevar
of Maulana Ashraf AH Thanavi............................................................................189
III. The Home and Sanitation: New Sites for Intervention........................................ 196 IV. Empowering Women: Unani Schools for Women and an End to
Suffering in Silence?....................................................................................
203
V. Unani Tibb and Amraz-i Nisvan (Women’s Diseases)........................................213
VI. Ikhtinaq ar-Rahm or the Asphyxiating Womb.................................................... 214
Chapter 6
HakTm - Patient Relationships: The Unani Journal and Domains of Authoritative
I. Two Prominent Unani Journals: Rafiq al-Atibba and al-Hakim..........................230 II. Male Sexuality and the Medicalisation of a New Moral Order in Early
Twentieth-Century Tibb........................................................................................235
III. Weakness and Patient - Practitioner Exchanges
.............................
246
IV. Magical Medicine in the Journal.......................................................................... 252
V. Marketing Medicines............................................................................................257
VI. Globalising Unani Pharmacy, Reconfiguring the Profession..............................265
Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 268
Bibliography.................................................................................................................... 273
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List of Illustrations
The certificate of Muhammad Mahbub Afi Khan granted by the Madrasa Tibbiya
Hyderabad in 1918............................................................................................................lib
The lotus {brahmi butt), an illustration by M. Niran Bakhsh in Risala al-Hakim, Lahore,
October 1935......................................................................................................................180
The front cover of Risala al-Hakim, Lahore, January 1929............................................232 Advertisement for the product Rafiq-i Badn, in al-Hakim, December 1922.................260
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Note on Romanisation
For the transliteration of most Urdu and all Arabic words I have adopted the romanisation guidelines of the Library of Congress for these languages. I have romanised all passages quoted from Urdu and Arabic sources; these appear as footnotes to English translations to these passages given in the body of the text. The few Urdu/Hindi words which I have not included in this romanisation scheme are the names of persons, ‘Hakim’ when it appears in titles, and the terms ‘unani’ and ‘ayurveda’ (except where these are quoted or appear in the titles of works). In these cases I have followed the conventions of South Asian English, while Arabic and Persian names have been romanised.
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Acknowledgements
I may have spent the better part of four years working on the themes and the material of this thesis, but many people have helped to bring this work about, contributing their time, thought and energy. I now relish the opportunity to say thank you to them all, or, if this is not possible, to thank most of them at least. My first debt is to my supervisor, David Arnold, whose insights helped me to make sense of the range of material we discussed together, and gave shape to this thesis. The research for this PhD was funded by a doctoral studentship from the Wellcome Trust. I thank them for their generous support. I thank Charles Burnett at the Warburg Institute in London for his support as supervisor of my MA dissertation, which launched my interest in indigenous medical practices in India. I am very grateful for the interest Dominik Wujastyk, former curator of Sanskrit manuscripts at the Wellcome History of Medicine Library, has taken in my MA dissertation and subsequent studies over the years. My next thanks goes to Claudia Liebeskind, who generously gave me details of a number of her contacts in India and leads to follow up. These I found tremendously useful and helped me to establish links with unani practitioners on my first trip to India. Hakim Zillurrahman of Aligarh was one such, from whose knowledge, experience and generous spirit I have benefited. I would like to thank the staff at the Central Council Research in Unani Medicine in New Delhi, in particular Mehr-e Alam Khan, and also the staff at the Jamia Hamdard in Delhi. My sincere thanks go also to Sadia Rashid, director of the Hamdard Foundation in Karachi and daughter of the late respected Hakim Muhammad Said, for welcoming me to Madinat al-Hikmat, to Dr. Zubairi for his interest in my work, and also to Dr. Usman Ghani for helping me with some specific enquiries. Thanks too to Nausheen, Rafiq and Menaal for their warmth and hospitality.
In Hyderabad-Deccan, I would firstly like to thank the tireless Syed Ali Yadullahi, who, on my first research trip to Hyderabad, led me from the library of the Henry Martin Institute to many of the fascinating, rich second-hand bookshops near Char Minar, and generously devoted much of his time and energy trying to find materials for me. I am also endebted to the generosity of S.A. Hussain at the Indian Institute of History of Medicine
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in Hyderabad, and to its former director Momin Ali. I thank the director of the Henry Martin Institute and the staff in its well-catalogued library. I thank Dr. Murali and the director of the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram for introducing me to their rich collection in the process of their miraculous restoration efforts following the disastrous floods of the summer of 2000. The staff at the Government Unani Hospital and Nizamia Tibbi College were also helpful, especially Dr. Bashir Ahmed and Dr. Abdulqadir. I would also like to thank the many graduate and post-graduate students whom I met at the College for the interest they showed in my work and the willingness with which they answered some of my questions. I thank Sultan at the internet cafe near Birla Mandir for introducing me to Hakim Muhammad Ismail, who generously allowed me sit, many evenings a week, in his clinic, observing his treatment of patients and learning from his knowledge. For this experience I am very grateful. I thank the helpful staff at Hyderabad’s daily newspaper Siasat, in particular the editor Zahid Ali Khan, for running a small piece about my research interests, which helped me to make contact with a number of practitioners and members of the public who generously shared their knowledge and materials with me. I am particularly thankful to Mohiuddin and Hakim Muhammad Khairuddin, who let me and my wife benefit from spending some time at his clinic, provided an exhibition of raw medicinal drugs at his home and introduced us to his supplier of medicinal substances; to Dr. Hashmi for giving me access to his private library; to Hakim S.A. Qadri in Balapur, who let me consult his private library and photocopy some of his material.
I am grateful to the director and staff of the Andhra Pradesh State Archives in
Tarnaka, and especially to Shankar and Qamr ul-Nisa Begum; I thank V.K. Bawa for his interest in my work and his suggestions for approaching the archives, and Margrit Pernau, even though it was too brief an encounter. My thanks are also due to the director and the librarian at the Urdu Hall in Himayat Nagar, to the cooperative staff at the Idarahi Adabiyat-i Urdu in Somajiguda, and the librarians of the Osmania University, State Central and Salar Jung Libraries.
I thank the bone-setters Hakim Ghulam Rasul and sons in Shah Ali Banda for sharing their time and expertise with me and my wife. I am very grateful also to Muhammad Siddiq Ahmed, who passed on to me a useful document (and had a delicious shir khurma prepared for us). I thank also Sadiq Naqvi, Hakim Syed Qudratullah, Hakima Kesar Mohini, S.M. Mustafa and the grandson of Hakim Syed AH Ashufta. I am very grateful to my Urdu teachers, Tahsin in Hyderabad and Simon Qadri in London, for helping me cover texts more efficiently and correcting my misinterpretations. I thank also the photocopiers beside the Public Gardens and on Hyderguda Main Road for their patience and skills in carefully making copies of sometimes delicate materials. A very special thanks is due to Fazluddin Ahmed of the Osmania University Library for his friendship, generosity, dedication and interest in my work, and for his expertise as a librarian. A hearty thanks to Giri, Rekha, Rahel, Viju and Hoshang for the lively companionship which they brought to our stay in Hyderabad, and also to Buchamma for offering a place for us to stay. Thanks to Ravi and Bhanu for their great-spiritedness.
In London I wish to thank Lawrence Conrad for his insights into the history of medicine in West Asia. I am grateful to the help given by the knowledgeable librarians at the British Library, especially the curator of Urdu materials Leena Mitford, and the History of Medicine Library at the Wellcome Trust; also to Avril Powell for her useful comments on my work; to Markus Daechsel and the many others who raised thoughtprovoking questions at the Tuesday evening South Asia History seminars at SOAS; to Nilanjan, Rosie and the rest who started out on PhDs at SOAS at the same time as I did in the winter of 1999; to Tahir for dropping in on us out of the blue; A big thanks to Brian Black for his companionship, the animated discussions and for his enthusiastic support of good food and local north London traditions.
I thank my father and Angelika for all their love and support (financial and emotional!) over the years, which enabled me at the outset to develop my research ideas on my first trip to India and finally to bring this PhD to completion; the thesis has been certainly much improved by their incisive proof-reading. I thank my mother for her wishes for me.
How do I thank Malvika, my wife and soul-partner, for she has been in this thesis all along? Without her nothing of this would have happened. She has been my constant source of joy and inspiration; when I was low and there seemed to be no way out she gave me strength and the self-confidence to find a way to move on. This thesis has been a journey for us both, and I admire her forbearance, and her perspicacity, which she has
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applied from the beginning and in every stage to my work. In the last few months she has brought a new source of joy into my life: our baby boy Jalin, whose beautiful presence has made the final four months completing this thesis a truly wonderful time.
In spite of all the thoughts and contributions of others I take full responsibility for any errors and omissions in this work.
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Chapter 1
Introduction
Unani tibb1 can lay claim to a legacy of tremendous scope both geographically and temporally, having been embraced and shaped by peoples over the last thousand years in cultures stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia to North Africa, Hispano-Arabia and Western Europe in the West, to Central, South and South-East Asia to the East. In South Asia the vitality of unani tibb continues to exist, in text, practice, commerce and institutional structures. Unani tibb has also been practised in an ad hoc manner in pockets of the South Asian diaspora, such as in East Africa, the UK and the USA, although in recent years unani institutions have emerged in the diaspora as well, such as the Mohsin Institute, founded in Leicester in 1978. These trajectories of translocation raise the fundamental questions of what the relationship between the unani medical tradition and applied knowledge and practice at specific times and places is, what the processes that have either motivated or inhibited the elaboration of certain forms of knowledge are and how they are to be identified. In this thesis I shall argue that a productive, but to date little explored, means of approaching these themes lies with recognising the operation of different forms of authority.
The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century present us with a time of critical importance for the development of unani tibb in South Asia, for exploring its
