Forgotten Arab Genius
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LEGACY OF ARABIC MEDICINE Ibn Al-Nafis Forgotten Arab genius – Written by Michael Hamilton Morgan, USA There is probably no one who only preserved Greco-Roman thought and European ‘re-discovery’, comparable to Ibn better illustrates the sometimes tragic then enabled its translation into Europe, Sina’s word association and talk therapy misunderstandings in the 1400 year where a more secular and open society used predating Sigmund Freud by 800 years, or al- relationship between the West and the it to spark the Renaissance. Jahiz’ theory of natural selection predating Arab-Muslim world, than Ibn al-Nafis, the Al-Nafis disproves the Western belief Darwin by 1000, or Ibn al-Haytham’s early first recorded discoverer of how the blood that increasing conservatism in 13th century 11th century forgotten work on optics circulates from heart to lungs and back Sunni Islam ended Islamic scientific and enabling Copernicus’ discovery of the again, exchanging waste carbon dioxide for medical invention at that time. And finally he earth’s orbit of the sun in the 17th century? life-giving oxygen. reminds the modern world of the forgotten Now to the facts. Al-Nafis, known for The misunderstandings he personifies mechanism of how medieval translations of most of his life as Ala al-Din Abu al-Hassan are many. For example, he is a ‘poster boy’ Arabic manuscripts into European tongues Ali Ibn Abi-Hazm al-Qarshi al-Dimashqi, for those who believe the Arab world for moved ideas from Golden Age Islam into was born in Damascus in the year 1213 and centuries seeded European discovery and Dark Age and medieval Europe. did his medical studies at the Bimaristan al- invention and then was discredited as Looked at another way, how did al-Nafis’ Noori – even as the world was traumatised Europe rose to dominate the globe and discoveries trickle into Europe for 400 years, by the relentless western advance of the rewrite the narrative of scientific discovery. yet lay buried in a German archive until Mongol forces of Genghis Khan. This He is a powerful denial of the Orientalist 1936 CE, so that he didn’t receive Western century-long military holocaust displaced ‘refrigerator theory’ – debunked by George credit for his discovery which went instead and killed millions of people, destroyed the Saliba at Columbia University: i.e. that to William Harvey in 1628? Why did al-Nafis royal city of Baghdad and destabilised other Arab Muslim science was too religiously suffer one more forgotten breakthrough rich and ancient cities in Persia, Afghanistan constrained to actually invent anything, but by an Arab fully 4 centuries before the and elsewhere in Eurasia. 386 Like his equally-mysterious fellow immigrant-genius Ibn al-Haytham – father of modern optics, who had adopted Cairo as his new home after leaving Iraq – Ibn al-Nafis was an orthodox Muslim. Like his fellow Muslim polymaths, al-Nafis wrote across multiple disciplines, including astronomy, theology, Islamic law and even sociology. He even wrote perhaps the Arabic language’s first science fiction novel, Theologus Autodidactus, about a child raised on a desert island who later comes into contact with the larger world. To understand the man and his work, one should have a fairly clear understanding of the religious context in which he worked, and also how his own religious beliefs shaped his work in the mid- and late-1200s CE. Conventional Western views depict that time as one of rising conservatism in Sunni Islam, explained in part by al-Ghazali’s reaction against Hellenistic thought, the Crusades, the disappearance of the Fatimids and the Mongol invasion. All these things, in the eyes of Western historians like Bernard Lewis, were the death knell of the Golden Age of Islam and the end of Arab Muslim scientific invention. That someone like al- Nafis could do his work at that time seems to these observers accidental or an anomaly. Image: The opening page of one of Ibn al-Nafis's medical works. This is probably a copy Put another way, much has been made in India during the 17th or 18th century. PD-Old-100 Wikimedia Commons. made at a distance of 1000 years about the supposed fatal clash of the schools of But the Arab resistance finally took Al-Nafis may have been personal physician reason and revelation in Islam and how hold in Syria and Egypt, and so Damascus to Mamluk Sultan al-Zahir Baybars al- that influenced the rise and fall of Muslim and Cairo were spared the horrors of the Bunduqdari. science and discovery in the period 800 to Mongols, enabling those two cities and There are many unanswered questions 1700 CE. their intellectual refugees from the east to about al-Nafis. The earliest one centres There is no doubt that there was a reach even greater heights of achievement, around his Syrian companion Usaibi’a, who difference of opinion about how to interpret replacing the role of fallen Baghdad. would become a respected historian and religious text. But there was no stark In 1236 at the age of 23, al-Nafis followed who wrote extensively about his times and dividing line, particularly for devout and his schoolmate Usaibi’a (a future historian the many medical leaders and thinkers he brilliant thinkers like Ibn al-Haytham, al- and biographer) and moved to Cairo where knew. But Usaibi’a never once mentions Kindi, al-Tusi and of course al-Nafis. he first worked at the Al-Nassri Hospital and al-Nafis. Beirut scholars Haddad and There was a spectrum, from the most subsequently at the Al-Mansouri Hospital. Khairallah speculated in 19361 that there literalist, to the most interpretative and He even became Mansouri’s physician-in- was some altercation between the two at Al cosmopolitan. But fiercely inventive chief. Mansouri Hospital was one the most Mansouri, or that Usaibi’a was jealous of his thinkers like al-Nafis and Ibn al-Haytham, advanced in the world, in a city reaching its schoolmate’s genius and so erased him from though they were devout, were scientific true zenith of power, wealth and influence. history. free-thinkers. They saw no conflict between 387 LEGACY OF ARABIC MEDICINE being devout and being scientists who took world-class philosophy and the seeds of the colour changes to ‘spirit’ and ‘life force’. no scientific or medical theory on faith. representative democracy, often failed To explain movement of the blood from According to Nahyan Fancy in his PhD at certain basics of empirical science. the heart to lungs and back, Galen had dissertation at Notre Dame2, Al-Nafis was They were too much caught up in their theorised that there was a porous membrane somewhere in the middle of the reason imaginative theories and hypotheses that between the left and right ventricles that let vs revelation poles and had no problem went untested by scientific verification. the blood pass through and begin its journey working there. What he did not do was to let One key example is Ptolemy’s again. Galen hypothesised this sometime in literal sacred text deter him from scientific explanation of light and vision. Ptolemy the late 2nd or early 3rd century CE. reality. As with Ibn al-Haytham, he believed theorised that light was a ray that emerged There was no evidence of these pores, but that a scientist’s role was to uncover the from the eyeball and illuminated the object because Galen saw no other explanation, truth of God’s creation in all its forms by being looked at. This now seems odd and they ‘had’ to be there. direct examination, not by taking scientific absurd, but like Galen’s theory of circulation, This is very similar to 2nd century CE or medical fact on faith or on the basis of it stood unchallenged for about 1000 years, Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy’s equant, sacred text. until Ibn al-Haytham proved that light a very complicated mathematical formula But he devoutly followed religious came from a light source, struck the object used to explain the otherwise baffling rules and practices. According to Haddad and was reflected back to the eye that saw it. movements of planets and stars across the and Khairallah, on his deathbed al-Nafis Now imagine what al-Nafis had to sky in a geocentric universe. The huge error reportedly refused wine to ease his pain and contend with, to undo Galen’s views. The first here was Ptolemy’s mistaken belief that the he was reported to have voiced the common obstacle was a long standing unquestioning earth was at the center of the solar system. belief that the Mongol invasion was sent by reverence for Galen that most Arab Muslim Galen was guilty of the same Greek Allah to punish the Muslims for adopting physicians had adopted; one exception was failing: un-scientific attachment to his the decadent ways of Persia and other older 9th century Baghdad physician al-Razi, in unproven hypothesis about blood. civilisations. his 'Doubts about Galen'. As medical scholar John B. West points At the youthful age of 29, in the year 1242 A second and just as formidable obstacle, out in a 2008 article in the Journal of CE, al-Nafis published his Commentary on was a general aversion to dissection and Applied Physiology3, al-Nafis’ Commentary Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon, containing vivisection in the 13th century world. Al- made three key revisions to Galen, (using a his revolutionary thoughts on heart-lung Nafis is very noncommittal about whether translation by Max Meyerhof): blood circulation. But to make his discovery, he practiced dissection. But he, or someone • “…but there is no passage between these al-Nafis had to overthrow a theory of close to him, must have.