Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 240

been preserved by Ibn Abī Uaybia. (9)
Ibn Bulān's last recorded work, on which
he worked in 455/1063, is a Discourse,
Maāla , “on the reason why the skilled
physicians have changed the treatment of
most diseases which were formerly treated
with hot remedies, advising in their place
a cooling treatment, e.g. for plegia, facial
paralysis, paresis and others, and why
they disagree with the rules laid down by
the Ancients in compendiums ( kanānī ª )
and pharmacopoeias ( arābā £ īnāt ), and
how this new system has gradually gained
ground in Irā and the neighbouring
countries from the beginning of the year
377/988 down to the year 455”; Ibn
Bulān refers to changes in climate and
subsequent changes in vegetation; extracts
have been preserved in the biographies of
Ibn Abī Uaybia and of al-abbā ¶ , who
quotes Abū ‹ arr al-alabī. Ibn Bulān's
refusal to follow slavishly the doctrines of
the Ancients, notwithstanding his deep
knowledge of them, also appears from his
controversy with Ibn Riwān.

to earn his living and the money for his
instruction by astrological forecasting in
the streets and by similar means. He never
had a teacher in medicine, which became
a matter of reproach to him later, and he
studied exclusively from topics. He says
himself that he did not possess the means
to pay the apprentice's fee demanded by
medical practitioners. He also was unable
to marry until he was thirty. But after
his thirtieth year he began to acquire a
good medical reputation, and when he
was appointed Chief Physician of Egypt
by the Fāimid Caliph of Cairo (it can-
not have been ākim who disappeared
in 411/1021, when Ibn Riwān was only
twenty-three years old, but was prob-
ably al-Mustanir, 427/1036-487/1094),
he acquired prosperity and wealth. Abu
'l-Muaskar usayn b. Madān, the ruler
of Makrān, consulted him when he was
stricken by hemiplegia. Ibn Riwān
never left Egypt and perhaps not even
the immediate neighbourhood of Cairo,
where he became “one of the foremost
to give information about the branches of
knowledge in which he claimed author-
ity” (Ibn al-ifī). The site of his house
remained known for a long time. Accord-
ing to Ibn Abī Uaybia, he adopted an
orphan girl in the period of famine and
plague which started in 445/1053, and
he educated her and she grew up in his
house; but once when he left her alone,
she took gold to the amount of 20,000
dīnārs and valuables and fled, and noth-
ing more was heard of her; thereafter, his
mind became deranged. Ibn Riwān was
inclined to acrimonious polemics against
his predecessors and contemporaries,
including unayn b. Isā, al-Rāzī, Ibn
al- ⁄ azzār, Ibn al-ayyib, Ibn Bulān
and others. Whereas he is unanimously
praised as a medical practitioner, and Ibn
Abī Uaybia calls him “a better medical
man (than Ibn Bulān) and better trained

( J. Schacht)

Ibn Riwān

Abū 'l-asan Alī b. Riwān b. Alī
b. ⁄ afar al-Mirī Ibn Riwān was a
renowned physician and medical author
and polemist of Egypt. We are well
informed about his life and personal cir-
cumstances because he composed an auto-
biography, the essence of which has been
preserved by Ibn Abī Uaybia, when he
was approaching sixty. It is pervaded by
a strong feeling of complacency which
is, perhaps, explained by his experiences
and explains, in its turn, his addiction to
polemics. He was born in 388/998, the
son of a baker in Giza near Cairo. He
was very poor, had a hard youth, and had