Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 227

Ethics here becomes entirely prudential,
as al-Rāzī's critics were not slow to note.
If we knew that our ultimate state was
immortality, and the return of the soul in
us to her true home, our mad scrabbling
after the surrogates of immortality would
cease. But the fear of death “can never be
banished altogether from the soul, unless
one is certain that after death it shifts to
a better state.” And his conclusion is that
it “would require very lengthy argumen-
tation, if one sought proof rather than
just allegations ( ¶ abar ). There really is no
method whatever for argument to adopt
on this topic . . . The subject is too elevated
and too broad as well as too long. . . . It
would require examination of all faiths
and rites that hold or imply beliefs about
an afterlife and a verdict as to which are
true and which are false”—a task al-Rāzī
has no immediate or pressing intention of
attempting. For practical purposes, then,
he offers the Epicurean consolation that
death is nothing to us, if the soul is really
mortal. What scripture has to say on the
subject is just another undemonstrated
report, an unsubstantiated allegation.

“ al-aydana therefore is the knowledge of
simple drugs according to their selected
sorts, kinds and forms, as well as the
knowledge of the mixture of medicaments
composed in conformity with their writ-
ten prescriptions or on the basis of what
the trustworthy and righteous researcher
strives for. The highest rank, however,
is held by the knowledge of the effects of
the simple medicaments and their specific
qualities”. Besides, aydana indicates the
druggist's actual store of drugs, and also
(with or without a preceding kitāb ) the
handbook of drugs, the pharmacopeia.
Al-aydalānī is practically synonymous with
al-aār . Since healing powers are ascribed
to many perfumes, both terms indicate
also the merchant of spices and aromas.
The classical definition of pharmacol-
ogy is found in al-Bīrūnī's highly impor-
tant Preface to his unfinished K. al- aydana
[ fi 'l-ibb ], written in his old age. He clas-
sifies al-aydana as a sub-discipline in the
field of medicine. According to him, it is
the first of the stages of the medical art
and for many it counts only as the lat-
ter's preliminary stage because it is a tool
for practising medicine, not a part of it.
As far as the word aydana is concerned,
al-Bīrūnī first refers to the well-known
fact that the Arabic ād corresponds with
Indo-Iranian čīm . He approvingly quotes
amza al-Ifahānī, who is said to have
explained aydanānī as an Arabisation of
čandanānī “merchant of sandalwood”.
Sandalwood is not a medicinal plant par
excellence , but one may assume—al-Bīrūnī
continues—that the Persians, when look-
ing for sandalwood, came in contact with
the Indians and called their merchant of
perfume čandanānī . The Arabs would then
have taken over this term, and Arabised
it because they did not know a name for
it. And since sandalwood was not counted
among their perfumes, and since they
were hardly able to distinguish between a

(L.E. Goodman)

Pharmacology

Al-aydana (or al-aydala ) (Ar.) is phar-
macology, in the meaning of pharmacog-
nosy. The druggist is called al-aydalānī
or al-aydanānī . Al-Bīrūnī defines him
as follows: “He is someone who occu-
pies himself with gathering medicaments
according to their most commendable
sorts and with selecting their best kinds,
both simple ones and those which have
been prepared according to the most
excellent compositions, which have defi-
nitely been determined for that purpose
by medical authors”. Elsewhere he says