Islamic Medical Knowledge in Iran & India in the Modern Time

Islamic Medical Knowledge in Iran & India in the Modern Time
Date: 2/9/2008

TUMS/PRENS: Tehran University of Medical Sciences with the cooperation of French Institute of Research in Iran, Iranian & Islamic Civilizations & Culture Committee in the Iran’s Supreme Cultural Revolution Council (SCRC) are holding a three-day conference on “Islamic Medical Knowledge in Iran & India in the Modern Time” at Avicenna conference hall at TUMS from February 12-14, 2008.

Tehran University of Medical Science with the cooperation of French Institute of Research in Iran, Iranian & Islamic Civilizations & Culture Committee in the Iran’s Supreme Cultural Revolution Council (SCRC) are holding a three-day conference on “The Islamic Medical knowledge in Iran & India” at Avicenna conference hall at TUMS from February 12-14, 2008.

The conference’s opening speech will be at 9:30 a.m. (Tehran Time) on Tuesday morning and the delegates from the Iran’s Ministry of Health & Medical Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), the head of French Institute of Research in Iran, Dr Shams Ardakani, the secretary of the conference and, … will be present there.

The invitees are from Tehran, Iran and Shahid Beheshti Universities of Medical Sciences, Islamic Azad University, the Academy of Sciences of IR Iran, the National Museum and Shahed University.

The aim of this conference is to bring together studies on the history of Islamic medicine in Iran and India during the Modern Period, from the coming to power of the Safavids in Iran and the Moguls in India, until the reform phase of traditional medical knowledge and practice, which took place under the pressure of colonial science and technology.

Until the 18th century, the Iranian and Indian Muslim medical worlds made up a unified scientific milieu. The Indian Muslim medical elite were mainly composed of Iranian emigrants who often also held important political positions. Other than the Mogul courts, the sultanates of the Deccan, Bijapur, Ahmadnagar and Golconda, which intermittently adopted Shiâism as the state religion, were the centers that attracted the majority of these Iranian scholars. This epoch generated numerous studies and works on philosophy, rational and natural sciences, medicine, pharmacology, and the heritage of the main authors of the Safavid-Mughal’s age exerted a lasting influence on later authors and the curriculum of studies. The medical works composed in Persian, and to a lesser extent in Arabic and later in Urdu, in the Indo-Iranian field constitute the most important corpus of medical literature produced in the Islamic world during this period.

The most important phase in the Muslim doctors’ encounter with modern medical knowledge started in the nineteenth century. The criticisms made of traditional medicine came from the very ranks of Islamic and Indian cultural elites that were from the social class more open to the influence of modern scientific thought. Gandhi’s critical speech about the immobility of traditional medicines delivered at the opening of Delhi’s Ayurvedic and Unani Tibbia College is emblematic in this regard. On the other hand, there was no lack of eminent scholars who opposed the penetration of modern medicine.

The programs.
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