Study of Medicine in Commentaries on the Canon of Medicine

Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī’s Criticism of Predecessors

Abstract

It has been often said that after Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) physicians concentrated on commenting on his Canon of Medicine and only reproduced his thoughts. However, the genre of commentary does not necessarily mean the lack of original contribution. In this paper, by examining al-Tuḥfa al-Saʿdīya by Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 1311), one of the most widely-known commentaries on the Canon, I shed light upon the condition of the study of medicine in the thirteenth-century Islamic world.

In al-Tuḥfa, al-Shīrāzī referred to commentaries by his predecessors such as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) and Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288) and criticized their annotations. Although he declared in the introduction to al-Tuḥfa that al-Rāzī’s commentary was a “calumny (jarḥ),” not a “commentary (sharḥ), ”he frequently cited al-Rāzī’s arguments and the responses to them made by other commentators. It is apparent that al-Rāzī’s commentary occupied an important position in the tradition of commentaries on the Canon.

In Book 1, Part 1, Lesson 1, Section 1 of the Canon, Ibn Sīnā set forth a philosophical definition of medicine. Al-Shīrāzī explained the structure of this definition, then summarized the doubts which al-Rāzī raised in his commentary and the responses to them. Then, he criticized and refuted the arguments of al-Rāzī and other predecessors. Although al-Rāzī found Ibn Sīnā’s definition inadequate and proposed another definition, al-Shīrāzī defended it against doubts. In commenting on the Canon, al-Rāzī aimed at finding the truth rather than being loyal to Ibn Sīnā, but al-Shīrāzī tried to defend his words by solving the difficulties involved in his definition. This difference of attitude towards Ibn Sīnā between al-Rāzī and al-Shīrāzī shows that the commentators did not merely expound the text of the Canon. They discussed medicine eagerly, examined arguments by predecessors, and criticized each other.