Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

Mitt. des deutschen Inst. f. ägypt. Altertumskunde in Kairo 2 (1931) 1–21; Ullmann,
op. cit., 27f.; Sezgin, F. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. 3, Leiden 1973,
157ff.
116
Compiled in a similar way, though with a much shorter legendary period, is Celsus’
outline of the history of medicine (see above, 285 n. 32). The brief survey of the his-
tory of medicine in Ps.-Galen (
Intr. seu medicus, 14.674–676) starts with Asclepius,
who learned it from his father Apollo and then passed it on to men, and ends with
Hippocrates. Medicine existed in ancient times in Egypt as well, but Egyptian medi-
cine does not bear comparison with the ‘perfect’ medicine of the Greeks.
117
Meyerhof. Sultan Saladin’s physician, 169ff.
118
Strohmaier, G. ‘Von Alexandrien nach Bagdad’ – Eine fiktive Schultradition,
Aris-

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3. From
inventio to translatio artium: scheme and reality
301
nayn, ibn-G˘umay‘ begins with Asclepius, whom he identifies with Idris and the
Biblical Enoch. The legendary period, however, interests him little, and he
passes immediately over to the historical one, i.e., Hippocrates. Galen, who
lived 600 years later than Hippocrates, restored his doctrine by purifying it of
later falsification and checking it against medical practice.
After Galen, Christianity appeared among the Greeks and prevailed over them.
The Christians considered it a fault to study intellectual subjects and their kings
repudiated their cultivation and paid no heed to supporting those who sought
them. So those who sough them quit taking the trouble to study them, finding that
it took too long to read the books of Hippocrates and Galen. (The intellectual sub-
jects) were in a state of crisis and their teaching fell in disorder. Then came Ori-
basius, after the Christian kings were firmly set in their disregard of teaching. He
sought to spread (the teaching) among the common people by making it clearer
and easier to follow … He compiled compendia in which he clarified the craft and
by means of which he made learning easier for them. He was followed by Paul (of
Aegina) and those who came after him up to the present time.
Having told how the medical curriculum was reduced to twenty works of Hip-
pocrates and Galen (the so-called
Summaria Alexandrinorum of the sixth cen-
tury), ibn-G˘umay‘ goes on:
The instruction continued in Alexandria until the days of ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd-al-
‘Asis, for the director of instruction at that time, when ‘Umar was still governor
and before the caliphate was devolved upon him, converted to Islam at his hands
and became his companion. After the caliphate was devolved upon ‘Umar, the in-
struction was transferred from Alexandria to Antioch, Harran, and other places.
The teaching stood on shaky ground until al-Ma’mun took over as caliph. He re-
vived it and expanded it, and favored men of (scholarly) excellence. But for him,
medicine and other sciences of the ancients would have been effaced and become
extinct just as they are extinct today in the lands of the Greeks, lands in which
these sciences had been cultivated the most.
119
The summary of Greek medicine is but one of the elements of this history,
which took shape, on the whole, between the reigns of caliphs ‘Umar (634–
644) and al-Ma’mun (813–833). In its other versions – for example in al-
Mas’udi and al-Farabi – this summary is replaced by the outline of the history
of Greek philosophy from Aristotle till the end of Antiquity, and could as well
have been replaced by a similar outline of the history of astronomy. The key
point is the decline of Greek learning with the advent of Christianity and the
Byzantine rulers’ disregard for it, particularly manifest when set against the
flourishing of arts and sciences in the Muslim world under the wise and en-
lightened caliphs. D. Gutas believes these anti-Christian and anti-Byzantine
polemics were part of the al-Ma’mun’s official ideology, which “consisted of