The Hospital in Islam



[Nasr
Islamic Science, an illustrated study]
p.154

 

The institution of the hospital was inherited by the Muslims from both the Persians and the Byzantines. Already before the rise of Islam, the hospital at Jundhapur, near the present Persian city of Ahvaz, was a major medical institution which, in addition to the care of patients, medical instruction was carried out on an estenxive basis. There were also hospitals established by Byzantines in their eastern provinces such as Syria which became rapidly integrated into the Islamic world.

Benefiting from the existence of these institutions, the Muslims soon created their own hospitals. Although al-Walid I is said to have created the first hospital in Islam in the 1st/7th century, the first real hospital with all the required facilities of that day was established by Harun ar-Rashid in Baghdad, during the 2nd/8th century, and the Christian physicial Jibrael ibn Bukhtishu was called from Jundishapur to head it.


It was this hospital which became the pivot of medical activity and the center for the rise of Islamic medicine. The Baghdad hospital wa slater headed by such famous physicians as Yuhanna ibn Massawayh and it served as model for numerous other hospitals in Baghdad, the most famous being the Adudi founded by the Persian ruler Adud al-Dawlah in the 4th/10th century. Hospitals were also founded in other Muslim cities such as the one in Rayy which was headed by al-Razi before he went to Baghdad.

Al-Razi wrote a book on the necessary characteristics of a hospital entitled 'Kitab fi sifat al bimaristan' (Book on the characteristics of the hospital).

Another major hospital was the one established in Damascus by Nur al-Din al-Zanji in the 6th/12th century. It was said to have been built from the money receiveed as ransom for one of the Frankish kings. A similar Nuri hospital was built in Aleppo. Soon afterwards Salah al-Din al-Ayubbi constructed the Nasiri hospital in Cairo and from then on for several centuries a close link existed between the medical centers of Syria and Egypt.


The most notable hospital in Egypt was the Mansuri hospital built by al-Mansur Qalaun in the 7th/13th century from an old Fatimid palace. The hospital had beds for several thousand patients with different wards specified for various illnesses and seperate sections devoted to each of the sexes. It also posessed lecture halls, a library, a mosque and seperate administrative quarters.

A Century earlier, the Almohad king Yaqub al-Mansur built the first large hospital of the Maghrib in Marrakesh (Morroco) and attracted notable physicians such as Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd to his court. From then on hospitals continued to be built in the Maghrib, some, like the 7th/13th century one at Sale, built by Mawlay Abd al-Rahman, being still in use today.


Likewise in Tunisia, Algeria and Andalusia (Islamic Spain) itself, many hospitals were built whose descriptions remain in various literary sources, and the word 'bimaristan' (a persian word meaning 'the place of the sick') which has always been used in Arabic as the word for hospital, entered into the Spanish language in the form 'malastan' or 'marastan'.

In the Ottoman Empire, hospital building continued to follow the earlier Seljuk and Abbasid models. The first Ottoman hospital was the Dar al-Shifa in Bursa built in thr 8th/14th century followed by that of Mehmet II built in the 9th/15th century as part of his Kulliye.

Supported usually by a religious endowment (waqf) and also by help of living persons or the state, the hospital became a major scientific institution in the Islamic world. It developed into various types, ranging from general hospitals catering for all kinds of diseases to those specializing in the treatment of lepers or the insane and even animals. The teaching and practice of Islamic medicine is inseperable from the institution of the hospital which at its height in fact contained, in addition to wards, major libraries, lecture halls and other facilities necessary for the training of medical students.

Also significant for its medical uses is the traditional bath (hammam) which is to be found in one form or another throughout the Islamic world. Because of various forms of bodily purification required by Islamic law, baths were built from the earliest times and to this day there is no small village without a public bath which is attended regularly for ritual as well as hygenic reasons. But in addition the use of hot and cols air and water and the rub-down or massage which is administered by a professional class trained for medical purposes and numerous treatises have been written on the subject as that of Qusta ibn Luqa. Ibn Sina also discusses the medical uses of the bath and he as well as al-Razi are said to have treated some patients in the bath itself.


The traditional use of the Muslim bath is almost a rite of its own. It usually takes several hours. Besides the washing of the body, the rub-down and ritual purification, special lliquids are drunk and specified periods spent either in the steam room or the cool waiting room outside. Physicians have used the bath for all kinds of cures ranging from overcoming headaches to reviving sexual energy. The Turkish bath which is so celebrated in the West is the last chapetr in a long history of the bath as both social and medical institution stretching over the whole Islamic history.




 

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