Avicenna Poem on Medicine (Traditional Medicine) - Softcover

Abu 'Ali Al-Husayn Ibn Sina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156744833X ISBN 13: 9781567448337

Publisher: Kazi Publications, Inc., 2013

Synopsis

One may at some point wonder what students were using for a textbook on medicine 1000 years ago. Did it have any similarity to what we know as a textbook today? If we were to take Avicenna s Poem on Medicine as an example, we see that it was far from what we know a textbook to be today. Here, in the Urjuza fi l tibb, it comes in the form of an easily memorized rhymed verse. Physicians were offered a mnemonic in the form of a poem which established the essentials of Avicenna's theory and practice: principles, observations, advice on therapeutics and dietetics, simple surgical techniques. This is the famous Urjuza fi l-tibb, which was translated into Latin several times from the 13th to the 17th century, under the title Cantica Avicennae (ed. with French trans. by H. Jahier and A. Noureddine, Paris 1956, Poeme de la Medecine, together with Armengaud de Blaise's Latin translation).
(Encyclopedia of Islam: © 1999 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands)

About this title

About the Author:

Abu 'Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina is better known in Europe by the Latinized name Avicenna. He is probably the most significant philosopher in the Islamic tradition and arguably the most influential philosopher of the pre-modern era. Born in Afshana near Bukhara in Central Asia in about 980, he is best known as a polymath, as a physician whose major work the Canon (al-Qanun fi'l-Tibb) continued to be taught as a medical textbook in Europe and in the Islamic world until the early modern period, and as a philosopher whose major summa the Cure (al-Shifa') had a decisive impact upon European scholasticism and especially upon Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). Primarily a metaphysical philosopher of being who was concerned with understanding the self s existence in this world in relation to its contingency, Ibn Sina s philosophy is an attempt to construct a coherent and comprehensive system that accords with the religious exigencies of Muslim culture. As such, he may be considered to be the first major Islamic philosopher. The philosophical space that he articulates for God as the Necessary Existence lays the foundation for his theories of the soul, intellect and cosmos. Furthermore, he articulated a development in the philosophical enterprise in classical Islam away from the apologetic concerns for establishing the relationship between religion and philosophy towards an attempt to make philosophical sense of key religious doctrines and even analyse and interpret the Qur an. Recent studies have attempted to locate him within the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions. His relationship with the latter is ambivalent: although accepting some keys aspects such as an emanationist cosmology, he rejected Neoplatonic epistemology and the theory of the pre-existent soul. However, his metaphysics owes much to the Amonnian synthesis of the later commentators on Aristotle and discussions in legal theory and kalam on meaning, signification and being. Apart from philosophy, Avicenna s other contributions lie in the fields of medicine, the natural sciences, musical theory, and mathematics. In the Islamic sciences ('ulum), he wrote a series of short commentaries on selected Qur anic verses and chapters that reveal a trained philosopher s hermeneutical method and attempt to come to terms with revelation. He also wrote some literary allegories about whose philosophical value recent scholarship is vehemently at odds. His influence in medieval Europe spread through the translations of his works first undertaken in Spain. In the Islamic world, his impact was immediate and led to what Michot has called la pandémie avicennienne. When al-Ghazali  led the theological attack upon the heresies of the philosophers, he singled out Avicenna, and a generation later when the Shahrastani gave an account of the doctrines of the philosophers of Islam, he relied upon the work of Avicenna, whose metaphysics he later attempted to refute in his Struggling against the Philosophers (Musari'at al-falasifa). Avicennan metaphysics became the foundation for discussions of Islamic philosophy and philosophical theology. In the early modern period in Iran, his metaphysical positions began to be displayed by a creative modification that they underwent due to the thinkers of the school of Isfahan, in particular Mulla Sadra (d. 1641).
-- Rizvi, Sajjad H. "Avicenna (Ibn Sina)" Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (January 2006)

Review:

According to Haven Krueger who translated the poem from the French translation of H. Jahier and A. Noureddine: In addition to the Canon of Medicine, Avicenna's work most frequently found throughout Europe is his Poem on Medicine (al-Urjuza fi l-tibb). This undated compendium is an abridgement of the ideas presented within [the Canon] and is considered by some authorities to be the most widely read and of almost equal value with the opus magnus... Avenzoar [Ibn Zuhr], who held little regard for [the Canon], proclaimed that the principles of science which the Poem contains make this work more valuable than a whole library of books. [The Poem on Medicine] was known in Western cultures during the middle ages in its [Latin] translations. The first extant indication of this work s having been translated into a European language was that done by Gerardo of Cremona who lived between 1114 and 1187... A century later, Armengaud de Blaise of Montpellier included a Latin translation of the Poem along with the works of Averroes... --Haven Krueger, "Poem on Medicine"

Latin translations continued into the 16th century in Europe: Between 1520 and 1522, a publication appeared in Venice with Blaise's Poem, Averroes' comments and a complete translation of [the Canon] to which were added the comments of Gentile, Jacques Desparts, Johannes Mattheus Gradi, and Thadea of Florence... Yet another series of translations of the Poem was begun by Andrea Alpagus of Bellune who added his efforts with the publication of 1527... In 1562, Benedictus Rinius Venetus introduced marginal notes to clarify many points of poorly indicated Avicennisms while in 1608 Joanne Costus and Joanne Paulo Mongius contributed an index and vocabulary. The only translation of this Poem into Latin verse was completed in the sixteenth century by Jean Faucher, but this work was not printed until 1630 in the Nimes edition of Guillaume Faucher. Both this publication and that of Antonius Deusingius demonstrate considerable contextual deviation from the translation of Alpagus. In 1649 appeared the last prose edition in Latin written by Antonius Deusingius and published in Groningue. It is obvious that this Arabist had access to all the previous translations so that his should reflect all the good qualities of previous attempts. Investigators claim that Deusingius was the only one who included an approximation of the Arabic text of the Poem s preface in verse. It is true that all of the works prior to 1649 are valuable, but Deusingius is of incomparable value because it follows most closely the Arabic text, rarely deviating from the exact sense of the words and then only in a justifiable manner. --Haven Krueger, Poem on Medicine

In a more recent essay, Rosanna Gorini ( Medicial Poetry in the Arabic Tradition: A Glimpse ) explains more about the use of the poem as a method of teaching: ...Poetry is indeed considered along with calligraphy and architecture one of the major Islamic art forms. Among the different genres of Arabic poetry, didactic verses were devoted to supply an approachable and simply remembered epitome of a particular field of knowledge. These didactic poems were largely popular in Medieval literature and were generally written in rajaz verse, a metre employed in Arabic poetry, which is a kind of iambic pentameter whose pattern of syllabic repetitions produces a jingling sound that is particularly easy to remember (2). The rajaz meter has been in use since the earliest times of Arabic literature (3). Many authors consider as the father of didactic Arabic verse Ab n b. Abd al-Hamad al Lahiqi, who established it as a genre of poetry. Numerous medical treatises, as well as essays on other subjects such as astronomy, agriculture, grammar, hippology etc. were written in verses to help learners imprint basic notions in their mind. Indeed the rajaz verse is quickly learned, because its stanzas are short and its rhythm light. The best known medieval Arabic didactic medical poem was the Urjuza fi l tibb (Poem on Medicine), written in rajaz verse by Ab Al al-Husayn ibn Abd All h Ibn S n , known in Europe as Avicenna. (Rosanna Gorini, ibid.) The poem became popular during the Middle Ages in Europe: . . . . thanks also to the Latin translation made in the middle of the 12th century by the Italian Gherardo da Cremona (who rendered the Arabic science available to European scholars through his Latin translations of the major Arabic works) and to that made, a century later, with the title of Avicennae Cantica, by the French Armengaud de Blaise (physician of the king James II of Aragon and of the Pope Clemente V). --Rosanna Gorini, "Poem on Medicine"

About this edition

• Publisher: Kazi Publications, Inc.
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 156744833X
• ISBN 13: 9781567448337
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 94