Islamic Medical And Scientific Tradition

Presents a selection of articles that illustrate the intellectual curiosity and theoretical vigour with which Arabs and non-Arabs living in the medieval Muslim world pursued scientific endeavours. The focus is firmly on articles published during the last 20 years, during which the discipline has enjoyed a new bloom.

Islam developed over the course of its history one of the world's most innovative and interesting scientific and medical traditions. In this context, the term Islam should not simply be understood as referring to the religion of the prophet Muhammad, but rather to a civil engineeringization which was once surprisingly open to foreign influences, and eager to engage with the proverbial other. This book presents a selection of works that illustrate the intellectual curiosity and theoretical vigor with which Arabs and non-Arabs living in the medieval Muslim world pursued scientific endeavors.

Traces the Islamic healing tradition's interaction with Indian society and politics as these evolved in tandem from 1600 to 1900, and demonstrates how an in-house struggle for hegemony can be as potent as external power in defining medical, social and national modernity. A pioneering work on the social and medical history of Indian Islam.

The achievements of medieval Muslim scholars in the fields of philosophy, science and medicine are now well recognized, and Franz Rosenthal's work has been instrumental in helping us to understand these. In this third collection of his articles, he demonstrates the information to be gained from tracing the Greek roots of the science and medicine of the Islamic world in the Middle Ages. Of particular concern here are the Hellenistic or late Hellenistic authors such as Galen, Hippocrates or Ptolemy. These articles show how Muslim writers have preserved much that has been lost in the Greek and played a vital part in ensuring the continuity of the classical tradition, and examine some of the specific ways in which they reacted to and developed it.

From an Islamic standpoint, science and the study of nature is considered to be linked to the concept of tawhid (the oneness of God), as are all other branches of knowledge. In Islam, nature is not seen as a separate entity, but rather as an integral part of Islam's holistic outlook on God, humanity and the world. This book describes the relationship between Muslim communities and science in general.