Authority, Knowledge and Practice in Unani Tibb in India, C. 1890
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Authority, Knowledge and Practice in UnaniTibb 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 ProQuest Number: 10673235 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10673235 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract This thesis breaks away from the prevailing notion of unanitibb 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 unani Jibb 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 practicetibb of 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 emergencetibb of 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. 2 Contents List of Illustrations.............................................................................................................. 6 Note on Romanisation............................................................. 7 Acknowledgements............................................................................................................. 8 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 (un, a Vehicle for a Modernising Agenda............................................................................................................ 55 II. Social Pressures and the Contingency of Medical Knowledge: 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 ClassicalTibb with Popular Realms....................................................................................................... 80 3 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 UnaniTibb in North India............................................100 1. Unani Instruction and Colonial Objectives in the Punjab 2. ConsolidatingTibb 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. UnaniTibb , 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 RevivalDesT of Tibb ............................... 164 1. Poor Quality Remedies and the DeclineTibb of ..................................... 165 2. Exhibitions and Herbaria..........................................................................169 4 3. Plant Directories and Collating Compendia of Remedies.......................170 III. Plants and the ‘Nation’ in the Unani Journalal-HaJam ....................................... 177 Chapter 5 Treating Women: Women’s Engagement with UnaniTibb and its Engagement with Women in Early Twentieth-Century India.................................................................184 I. Treating Women................................................................................................... 186 II. Islamic Reform and Unani Medicine for Women: TheBihishti 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. UnaniTibb andAmraz-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 Practice in Early Twentieth-Century India......................... 228 I. Two Prominent Unani Journals:Rafiq al-Atibba andal-Hakim ..........................230 II. Male Sexuality and the Medicalisation of a New Moral Order in Early Twentieth-CenturyTibb ........................................................................................235 III. Weakness and Patient - Practitioner