Download PDF | The World of Pharmacy and Pharmacists in Mamluk Cairo-Brill Academic Publishers (2009).
328 Pages
INTRODUCTION
The manual for pharmacists Minhāj al-dukkān wa-dustūr al-aʿyān fī aʿmāl wa-tarākīb al-adwiya al-nāfiʿa li-ʾl-insān (‘The management of the [pharmacist’s] shop and the rule for the notables on the preparation and composition of medicines beneficial to Man’) was composed (according to the colophon of the Gotha manuscript) in the year 658/1260 in Cairo by the otherwise unknown Abū ʾl-Munā Dāwud b. Abī Nasr al-Kūhīn al- ̣ ʿAtṭār al-Hārūnī al-Isrā ̣ ʾīlī, apparently a Jewish druggist.
The work comprises twenty-five chapters, beginning with an exhortation to al-Kūhīn al-ʿAtṭār’s ‘son,’ and including chapters on ̣ simples (mufradāt), substitute drugs and weights and measures. Other chapters deal with compound medicines (murakkabāt) according to their methods of preparation. It survives in at least thirty manuscripts, including one in Judaeo-Arabic, and has been printed several times, first at Būlāq in 1870 and most recently in Beirut in 2001.1 Stein - schneider, in the relevant entry in his Arabische Literatur der Juden, 2 notes the existence of a manuscript claiming to be a translation into Hebrew of Minhāj al-dukkān, called Abqat Rokhel. Despite the fact that Minhāj al-dukkān has been a most popular work, and continued to be used at least until the 1960s,3 no in-depth studies of it have been undertaken previously.
Earlier studies of Minhāj al-dukkān (Steinschneider’s article on al-Kūhīn al-ʿAtṭār’s sources, ̣ 4 and the summaries of its contents composed by Nemoy5 and Hamarneh)6 have emphasised either philological or purely pharmacological aspects of the work. Given the dates of these articles, this is not surprising: In the same way that much research on medicine in Islam has been more interested in theory than in practice, most of the research on the history of pharmacy in Islam has been philologically or pharmacologically oriented, i.e. emphasising either the names or the active ingredients of drugs.7 The social history of Islamic medicine is a new field, generally speaking, and up to now discussions of pharmacy as a profession and as part of the fabric of society have (with few exceptions) dealt with the period up to the middle of the thirteenth century CE.
This book is an analysis of Minhāj al-dukkān as a reflection of the position and role of the pharmacist in society. As the vast majority of pharmacological8 works in Arabic were composed by physicians, not by pharmacists, I believe that since al-Kūhīn al-ʿAtṭār was a practising ̣ pharmacist, writing (as I will show) for other pharmacists, his book reflects the then-current pharmaceutical practice. In order to demonstrate the book’s authorship and readership, I have, on the one hand, undertaken a close reading of Minhāj al-dukkān, looking for clues to al-Kūhīn al-ʿAtṭār’s professional identity (e.g., practical advice on the ̣ good management of one’s shop), and on the other hand, contextualized Minhāj al-dukkān within the Arabic pharmacological literary tradition, asking: What is similar and what is different in the structure and contents of Minhāj al-dukkān as compared to other pharmacological works? Part One of this book has the text as its focus.
I begin by studying the way earlier works are quoted in the chapters on murakkabāt (Chapter One), and then compare and contrast the remaining chapters of Minhāj al-dukkān with works composed by physicians (Chapters Two and Three). Part Two moves from the text to its context. In Chapter Four, the context is the medical-scientific establishment: Where were pharmacists situated within the learned class? How were they seen by physicians and by ʿulamāʾ (learned men of religion)? In Chapter Five, the context is, broadly, the pharmacist’s customers: I examine the image of pharmacists in a range of non-medical texts, from the Thousand and One Nights to Mamlūk chronicles. A question that needs to be addressed is the connection between the text and the contextualisation I provide.
In other words, why am I treating Minhāj al-dukkān as a specifically Mamlūk text? Given that it was composed only in 1260, very early in the Mamlūk period (1250– 1517), might it not be better considered as a generically ‘pre-modern’ or ‘medieval’ text? In reality, Minhāj al-dukkān seems to have been in very widespread use during the Mamlūk period. At least eight complete manuscripts from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries are extant, while the Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah Collections at Cambridge University Library holds six fragments of additional manuscripts.9 The vast majority, but not all, of the material from the Genizah dates to the period before 1260. Therefore the existence of several fragments of Minhāj al-dukkān dating from 1260 at the earliest, must be considered evidence of great popularity and extensive employment by (at the very least) the Jewish community of Cairo.
Moreover, while the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk periods were quite different in terms of their political history, there was a great degree of continuity in social and intellectual history.10 A book composed ten years after the founding of the Mamlūk state is certainly relevant for the late Ayyūbid and early Mamlūk periods; in light of the copious manuscript evidence for its use throughout the Mamlūk period, it may be seen as important for that entire era. Also, Minhāj al-dukkān is consistent with the information from material composed later in the Mamlūk period, like the ḥisba manuals11—this too is grounds for viewing it as a Mamlūk work, and as the primary document for our knowledge of pharmacy during the Mamlūk period.
The place of pharmacy and pharmacology in Arabic medicine12 Western research on the history of Arabic medicine, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, has been characterized by what may be called a search for a European context. On the one hand, scholars looked for the Greek sources, and on the other hand, they investigated the influence of translations from Arabic on the development of medicine in medieval Europe. Many scholars were physicians who had studied Arabic or Persian (like Browne13 and Meyerhof )14 and most of their attention was paid to the ‘Golden Age’ of medicine, namely the ninth to eleventh centuries CE. Until recently, Western scholars have evinced little interest in developments later than the time of Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) in the east and Ibn Rushd (d. 595/1198) in the west. All these factors have led to an emphasis on bio-bibliographies of medical writers and on the theory, rather than the practice, of medicine.
These trends reached their most mature form in Manfred Ullmann’s two volumes, bearing the confusingly similar names Die Medizin im Islam (a bio-bibliography)15 and Islamic medicine (a survey based on al-Majūsī’s Kitāb al-malakī).16 Pharmacology is considered, along with ophthalmology, to be one of the medical fields in which the Arabs excelled: these are the two areas that developed their own specialist monographic literature, in addition to chapters in medical compendia.17 From quite an early stage, pharmacy and medicine were separate professions.18 Books on medicine were among the first scientific works to be translated into Arabic during the translation movement of the third/ninth century.19 The range of materia medica known to the Arabs greatly surpassed that of the classical world, due to the extent of the Islamic empires and their trade contacts with the Indian and Chinese medical traditions; however, pharmacological theory seems to have remained strictly within the confines of Galenic humouralism.20
Theory will have very little place in this book, as al-Kūhīn al-ʿAtṭār makes no mention of ̣ it. Suffice it to say that the humoural theory, as applied to medicine, considers all organs to be composed of a mixture of four elements, each of which corresponds to an element which manifests two of the four primary qualities, thus: Yellow bile (al-safrā ̣ ʾ) = fire = hot and dry Black bile (al-sawdāʾ) = earth = cold and dry Phlegm (balgham) = water = cold and moist Blood (damm) = air = hot and moist A balanced mixture of the humours constitutes health, and sickness is caused by an imbalance. Healing is to a large extent the regaining of the desired balance of humours, preferably through diet and simples, then by use of compound medicines, and, as a last resort, through surgery.21 Pharmacopoeias, naturally, are useful in the first and second cases.
Cairo in the late Ayyūbid and early Mamlūk period After the restoration of Sunnī rule by Salāh ̣ ̣ al-Dīn (Saladin) in 566/1171, Cairo became the major centre of ‘orthodox’ Islamic learning, as it has remained to this day. After the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 655/1258, its prestige was enhanced further following the reestablishment of an ʿAbbāsid caliphate in Cairo, whose sole function was the legitimisation of the Sultan. During this period, from the late twelfth to the late fifteenth centuries CE, the city expanded both physically and demographically, despite setbacks caused by the Black Death.22 At the same time, many monuments, madrasas (colleges) and mosques were built by the Mamlūks, who found the use of pious endowments (awqāf, sing. waqf ) a convenient method of transferring at least some of their wealth to their descendants.23
This period saw the completion of the Islamisation of Egypt, with the Copts becoming a more or less persecuted minority,24 while the ruling elite remained foreign: no longer North African (as the Fātimids ̣ had been) or Kurdish (like the Ayyūbids) in origin, but white slaves of largely Kipchak Turkish and then Circassian origin. The Mamlūks were a one-generation military aristocracy, whose ranks were constantly replenished by new slaves from the steppes, rather than their own sons. The Mamlūks to a large extent remained aloof from the Arabic-speaking natives over whom they ruled, living apart from them in separate neighbourhoods or in the Citadel. Their descendants, on the other hand, became integrated into local society, and many sources for this period were written by children of Mamlūks, called awlād al-nās or ‘children of the people.’ During the late Ayyūbid and early Mamlūk periods, the Mamlūk soldiery were not yet the source of public disorder that they were to become in the ninth/fifteenth century. However, the Mamlūk institution in and of itself is of limited relevance to this book.25 More to the point is the fact that for much of the period of Mamlūk rule the spice trade moved through Egypt. Although this trade became a state monopoly in the early ninth/fifteenth century, up to then merchants had enjoyed the opportunity of becoming as wealthy as any amīr.
But Cairo was not only a hub of international trade in luxury goods; it was an important stage on the pilgrimage route to Mecca. Pilgrims from the Islamic West passed through Cairo on their way to the holy places of the Ḥijāz, while the sultan took his title of Protector of Mecca and Medina—and its concomitant privilege of providing the kiswā, the covering of the Kaʿba—very seriously.27 The wealthy merchant families formed one section of the urban milieu. Alongside them, and partly overlapping, we may note what Carl Petry has called the tripartite civilian élite: bureaucrats, juristscholars and religious functionaries.
The first were definitely minions of the state and included foreigners who came to Cairo in the trains of Mamlūk governors; the second controlled the interpretation of the sunna and commanded moral, not practical, authority and were part of an international fraternity of ʿulamaʾ; the third had no contact with political power but ensured the transmission of Islamic values, and were usually locals, in close contact with the community they served.28 Beneath these levels we find the ʿāmma, the common people. It is difficult to find more than a glimpse of them in most sources, written as they were by and for members of the élite classes. By and large, pharmacists would usually belong to the top level of al-ʿāmma, the class of respectable small shopkeepers and artisans.
In theoretical rankings of the respectability of tradesmen, pharmacists would be found near the top, dealing as they did in matters concerning the well-being of others. (It should be noted that the word ʿatṭ ār ̣ also denotes a perfumer and/ or a dealer in spices. As both could—and were—used medically, I have used ‘pharmacist’ as the routine translation throughout.) During the late Ayyūbid and early Mamlūk period, . . . Cairo was not only crowded but was a conglomeration of cosmopolitan of [sic] elements, all converging upon its centers of wealth and power. One never knew what consequences might evolve from an innocent trip out of one’s quarter into the squares and sūqs where one could encounter every sort of stranger.
The quarters themselves are hard to define. Ethnic and religious groups tended to have their own enclaves, but there were no strict rules limiting the ownership of property. The social unity of a quarter could derive from a common occupation, in which case the quarter might shade off into the adjacent market, or from a common origin outside Cairo. In many cases, the quarter served as the primary locale of identity.30 Finally, what of the Jews of Cairo, the community to which al-Kūhīn al-ʿAtṭār belonged? During this time, the Jewish community was com- ̣ posed of three groups: the Rabbanites, the Karaites and the Samaritans. The first two were considered by themselves31 and by the Muslim majority to form a category separate from that of the Samaritans, as shown by the fact that the Samaritans had their own titular leader, in addition to the Nagid or raʾīs al-yahūd, formally the liaison between the government and the Jewish community.32
This community is one of the best known of medieval Jewry, thanks to the documentation of daily life that has survived by chance in the Cairo Genizah.33 However, most of the Genizah fragments date to the Fātimid and Ayyūbid peri- ̣ ods, and thus are less relevant for the history of the community from about 1260 CE onwards.34 While the Ayyūbid period is that in which the great Moses Maimonides (1135–1204 CE) lived and worked in Cairo, in all other respects it marks a negative transition from the relative freedom and tolerance the Jews had enjoyed under the Fātimids. ̣ In addition to increased enforcement of the terms of the Pact of ʿUmar meant to humiliate non-believers and differentiate between them and Muslims, the Egyptian Jewish community declined in numbers and prosperity—all of which trends continued and were amplified under the Mamlūks.35
According to Stillman, the Mamlūk period ‘marks the nadir of medieval Egypt [sic] Jewry,’36 with new laws discriminating against non-Muslims being passed, and old ones enforced with new vigour. There was even a decree forbidding Jewish and Christian physicians from treating Muslim patients, a reversal of the traditional openness of the medical profession in the Islamic world.37 However, these developments took place later than al-Kūhīn al-ʿAtṭār’s own ̣ day, and he writes with the confidence of a respected member of his profession.
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