CHAPTER II.
MOHAMMEDAN MEDICINE.
Sources of Arabian Learning.—Influence of Greek and Hindu Literature.—The Nestorians.—Baghdad and its Colleges.—The Moors in Spain.—The Mosque Schools.—Arabian Inventions and Services to Literature.—The great Arab Physicians.—Serapion, Rhazes, Ali Abbas, Avicenna, Albucasis, and Averroes.
At the time of the incursions of the barbarians of the North, when Spain, the South of France, Italy, and North Africa, with their adjacent islands, were ravaged by these hordes, multitudes of those who could escape so far found a refuge in the East; and there is good reason for supposing that by such means a vast store of the accumulated knowledge of civilized Europe found its way to Eastern lands. Science in its turn has come back to us through the Saracens, who afterwards invaded Southern Europe.[678]
It is not correct to speak of the Arabians or the Saracens as the source of the culture which is known as Arabian and Saracenic. The magnificent civilization of the Greek world fell to pieces like a noble but ruined temple, and its precious relics went to form a score of other civilizations which ultimately arose from its ruins. It was not the Semitic peoples of Arabia which restored the philosophy and science of the decayed Græco-Roman world, it was the Persians, the Greeks of Asia Minor, the people of Alexandria, and the cultured Eastern nations, generally, which having been subdued by the Arabs, at once began to impart to their conquerors the culture which they lacked. The ignorant followers of the Prophet who burned the Alexandrian Library knew not what they did; the time was to come when Greek culture was to reach them partly from the city whose literary treasures they had destroyed, and partly through Syrian and Persian influences. By these roads came the medical sciences to the Saracens. The second library of Alexandria, consisting of 700,000 volumes, was destroyed by them, A.D. 642; but we must conclude that many medical and other scientific works were preserved, as the Jews and the Nestorians (banished from Constantinople to Asia) first made the Arabians acquainted with Greek authors by translating them into Syriac, whence they were in turn translated into Arabic. Justinian I. (A.D. 529) banished the Platonists of Athens, when Chosröes I., surnamed Nushirwan, or “the generous mind,” one of the greatest monarchs of Persia, hospitably received them at his court. He caused the best Greek, Latin, and Indian works to be translated into Persian, and valued Græco-Roman medical science so highly that he offered a suspension of hostilities for the single physician Tribunus.
The East in a great measure owed its acquaintance with the rich treasures of Greek literature to the heresy of Nestorius. Nestorius was a Syrian by birth, and became bishop of Constantinople. Having denied that the Virgin Mary ought to be called “Mother of God,” he was summoned to appear before the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), and was deposed. Nestorian communities were formed, and the heretical opinions rapidly spread, patronized as they were for political purposes by the Persian kings. The Mahometan conquests in the seventh century, by overthrowing the supremacy of orthodoxy, afforded great encouragement to the Nestorians, as by denying that Mary was the mother of God, as the Catholics maintained, the Nestorians in calling her the mother of Christ more nearly approached the Mahometan conception of a pure monotheism. Barsumas, or Barsaumas, bishop of Nisibis (435-485 A.D.), was one of the most eminent leaders of the new heresy. He succeeded in gaining many adherents in Persia. Maanes, bishop of Ardaschiv, was his principal coadjutor; he was the means of propagating the Nestorian doctrines in Egypt, Syria, Arabia, India, Tartary, and even China.
The Caliphs.
In the time of Mohammed himself (569-609), the Arabians had physicians who had been educated in the Greek schools of medicine living amongst them. Pococke mentions a Greek physician named Theodunus, who was in the service of Hajáj Ibn Yúsuf in the seventh century. He wrote a sort of medical compendium for the use of his son. Hajáj seems also to have employed another Greek doctor named Theodocus, who had numerous pupils.[679]
The House of Ommiyah encouraged the cultivation of the sciences. The Caliph Moawiyah, who resided at Damascus, founded schools, libraries, and observatories there, and invited the learned of all nations, especially Greeks, to settle there, and teach his people their arts and sciences.[680]
In the seventh century, Alexandria under the rule of Islam was in possession of many medical schools in which the principles of Galen were taught.[681]