Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 217

by the work Hai yao ben cao (“Materia
medica from the Oceanic route”), written
by Li Xun, a Persian who knew Chinese
well and became famous also as a Chinese
poet. He lived in the 9th/10th century
A.D. Many kinds of herbs which were
imported from Persia and other Muslim
countries, as well as the names of Chinese
herbs which were exported to these coun-
tries, have been recorded in the work Song
Hui Yao (“Historical records of the Song
dynasty”). The widespread use of Chinese
herbal medicine by Muslim physicians is
attested already by al-Kindī (3rd/9th cen-
tury) in his pharmacopoeia.
Chinese medicine soon gained increas-
ing influ- ence. In his Canon of Medicine , Ibn
Sīnā listed and recommended 17 medical
herbs which, as he added, were “imported
from China” ( yutā bihā [ tu ¡ lab ] min bilād
al-īn ). This is another piece of evidence
of Sino-Arabic exchange of herbal drugs
at that time. While the Muslim physicians
generally followed Galen, Ibn Sīnā's pulse
theory and pulse diagnosis followed more
closely the Chinese pulse diagnosis, dis-
played e.g. in Wang Shu-he's book Mai
jing (“Classic of pulses”, 2nd century A.D.).
There are many similarities between Ibn
Sīnā's Canon and Chinese medical theories,
e.g. in regard to the holistic understand-
ing of the human body, the principles of
combining medical herbal formulae, the
process of aging and the rôle of the body
fluids, alimentary therapy, etc.
Chinese medicine was especially pro-
moted by the great historian Ra ª īd Dīn
Fal Allāh abīb ( ca. 645-718 /ca . 1247-
1318), who served three Īl ¶ ān rulers as
Grand Vizier. Being himself also a physi-
cian, Ra ª īd Dīn was interested in Chinese
medicine. He had contacts with Chinese
physicians and ordered one of his pupils
to go to China and collect Chinese medi-
cal topics. He had them translated into
Persian and edited them, together with

an extensive preface of his own, under
the name Tansu-nāma , “Book of precious
information”; the subtitle given by Ra ª īd
Dīn is “The Īl ¶ ān's treasure book of
Chinese sciences”. Of this topic, divided
into 4 parts, only one part, together with
Ra ª īd al-Dīn's preface, has been pre-
served in a unique Istanbul manuscript.
Its main part has been identified as
commentary of a commentary on the
Mai jue , i.e. “Pulse poem”, which was
very popular in China during the Song
and the Yin-Yüan dynasties (12th-14th
centuries). At that time, the Mai jue was
by mistake attributed to Wang Shu-he.
This mistake was repeated also by Ra ª īd
Dīn, although the correct name Mai jue is
also mentioned in the Tansu-nāma . The
quotations from the Mai jue have been
embodied into the Tansu-nāma in its orig-
inal Chinese version, transliterated into
Arabic letters, together with explanatory
remarks. The manuscript of the Tansu-
nāma contains also several drawings of
high quality displaying inner organs, the
circuit of life-energy ( Qi ) and astronomi-
cal computations. Thus although this
work is only fragmentarily preserved, it
is of great significance for the history of
Chinese medicine being the first version,
known so far, of Chinese medical litera-
ture transmitted to the Islamic West.

(Emilie Savage-Smith, F. Klein-Franke
and Ming Zhu)

unayn b. Isā al-Ibādī

unayn b. Isā al-Ibādī was the most
important mediator of ancient Greek sci-
ence to the Arabs. It was mainly due to
his reliable and clearly written translations
of Hippocrates and Galen, that the Arab
physicians of the Middle Ages became
worthy successors of the Greek.