Islam and Healing

Islam and Healing Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600-1900

Seem a Alavi

palgrave macmillan

© Seema Alavi 2008 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-55438-2

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South Asian edition first published 2007 by PERMANENT BLACK 'Himalayana', Mall Road, Ranikhet Cantt Ranikhet 263645 perblack@gmail.com

This edition published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMiLLAN

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ISBN 978-1-349-36391-9 ISBN 978-0-230-58377-1 (eBook)

DOl 10.1057/9780230583771 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alavi, Seema.

islam and healing: loss and recovery of an indo-Muslim medical tradition, 16oo-1900/Seema Alavi.

p.cm. includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-36391-9 (hardback: alk paper)

1. Medicine, Arab-india-History. 2. Medicine, Greek and Roman-india­History. 3. Medicine - india-History I. Title. [DNLM: 1. Medicine, Unani­history-india. 2. History, Modern 1601-- India. 3. islam-history-india .. 4 Religion and Medicine - india. WZ 80.5.A8 A472i 2oo8J R605.A583 2008 61O.938-dc22 2008014350

Transferred to Digital Printing 20 I 0

For my parents

Roshan and Shariq Alavi

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements Xl

INTRODUCTION 1

1 INDO-MuSLIM MEDICINE: UNANI IN PRE-MODERN INDIA 18

Unani and the Dar aI-Islam: Eighth-Fifteenth Centuries 18 U nani in India 28 New Medical Learning in Arabic: Unani in Eighteenth-century India 43

2 ENCOUNTER WITH THE WEST: THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY 54 Introduction 54 The Calcutta Madrasa 56 The Native Medical Institution and the Medical Community of Urdu Literature 69

3 THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE: PUBLIC WELFARE 100

Introduction 100

Health and Public Welfare 101

The Arrival of Print: Medical Patronage, Textuality, and 'Authoriality' 129

4 DISPENSARIES AND SHIFAKHAANAS IN EARLy-NINETEENTH-CENTURY INDIA 154 Introduction 154 Administration of Dispensaries 155

Vlll Contents

The Dispensary as a Site for Clinical Trial of Materia Medica 171

Contesting Western Medicine in the Dispensary: The Native Doctor and Unani Learning 185

Contesting Colonial Medicine Outside the Dispensary: Unani in the Family and Private Libraries 196

5 DRDU MEDICAL TEXTS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY 205 Introduction 205 Persian Medical Literature Translated into Urdu: The Zakhirah-i-Khwarzmshahi (Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarzm) 207

Reaching Out to the Prophet: Homegrown Urdu Texts-The Mazhar-ul-Ulum and the Tibb-i-Nabawi 216

The Unani Defence: Competing with British Medical Literature 236

6 ARGUMENTATIVE HAKIMS: DEBATES IN THE OUDH AKHBAR 242 Introduction 242

The Critique of the Dispensary 245

The Urdu Press and the Making of Unani 'Modernity' 263 From Culture and History to a 'Nation' (Mulk) for Unani 276

Newspaper Advertisements: The National-Colonial Dialectic 278

7 FROM]HAWAIN-TOLA TO TAKMIL-UT-TIBB, LUCKNOW 291

Introduction 291 The Azizi Family of Lucknow Hakims: A Profile 293 Hakim Abd al Aziz and the Challenge of Colonial Medicine: The Takmil-ut-Tibb College at Lucknow 295 Creating a National Profile for Unani 306

The Hakim as a Professional: Balancing the National Local with the Subcontinental Professional 311

National vs Communitarian: Unani Gets a Muslim Hue 321

CONCLUSION 334

Glossary 340

Bibliography 353

Index 369

Preface and Acknowledgements

My maternal grandmother Begum Ejaz Jahan (1915-2000) introduced me to the world ofTibb-i-Unani. She was the granddaughter of Hakim Abd al Aziz, the founder of the Azizi family of Lucknow hakims. She made me realize that Unani was not just a system of medicine but a form of healing-a way oflife. The stories of intimate friendships that her family shared with the British civil surgeons ofLucknow encouraged me to think afresh about our colonial experience and its impact on our everyday lives. My grandmother's maternal home, the Takmil-ur-Tibb College in Lucknow, epitomized for me the entanglement of the local medical culture with the global contours of medical science. At the same time her pride in her family's exclusive status as the scholarly hakims of the city, different from neem hakims (spurious hakims), urged me to also explore the story ofTibb-i-Unani from within a very stratified tradition. This book is the result of my endeavours to under­stand the social history ofN orth India via a documentation and analysis of the history and transformation of the Unani healing tradition. It studies Unani texts and its practitioners from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries so as to unravel the complex social history of the period.

Claudia Liebeskind's essays on the Azizi family encouraged me to take the first step into the history of my grandmother's family. Margrit Pernau's boundless energy and enthusiasm provided the final push that converted those initial hesitant steps into a full-time obsession. Muzaffar Alam patiently heard the nuances of the argument and helped strengthen the pre-modern aspects of my work. Sumit Sarkar and Javed Majeed offered valuable advice at the initial stages of research.

The research for this book was carried our in Lucknow, Aligarh, New Delhi, and London. In Lucknow I was lucky to get valuable docu­ments and help from members of theAzizi family: my mother's maternal

XII Preface and Acknowledgements

uncle Abdul Rahim (grandson of Hakim Abd al Aziz), my maternal uncle Khwaja Shakir Husain (great-grandson of Hakim Abd al Aziz) , and Syed Imtiaz Ali (scion of the Azizi family and former Secretary, Takmil-ut-Tibb College, Lucknow). I am grateful to the staff of the Shibli Library in Nadwat-ul-Ulama, the Takmil-ut-Tibb College Lib­rary, and the Amir-ud-Daula Public Library in Lucknow. lowe a spe­cial word of thanks to Obaidur Rahman Nadwi for his valuable assistance in the city. In New Delhi, Sajjad Rizvi provided valuable editorial assistance in preparing the glossary. In Aligarh, Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman ofTibbia College was generous with his time and documents. In London, the British Library and the Wellcome Trust provided a mine of rich material in Persian, Urdu, and English. My friend Katherine Prior offered both intellectual support and the comfort of her home to enable me to access these libraries. I am grateful to my friend Guy Attewell of the Wellcome Institute, London, for sharing his time and ideas with me. His newly published book on Tibb-i-Unani in Hyderabad will add valuable weight to some of my own findings on North India.

The award of a Smuts Fellowship in 2002-3 enabled me to research this book full-time in the intellectually stimulating environment of Cambridge University. Here, the intellectual support and friendship of Chris and Susan Bayly, Gordon Johnson, the late Raj Chandavarkar, Tim Harper, Richard Drayton, and Francesca Orsini shaped my work in no small measure. I benefited also from the rich collections of the Cambridge University Library and the Centre for South Asian Studies. My loving friends of my student days in Britain-Katherine Prior, Mike Hirst, Simon Dunkley, Elke Nachtigall, and Calm O'Higgins­always made me feel at home.

A year-long Harvard-Yenching Fellowship at Harvard University in 2005 gave me the peace and quiet to devote myself to writing. I am grateful to the staff of the Widener Library at Harvard for readily mak­ing available all that I needed. Uncountable dinners and animated intellectual discussions at the kitchen table of Ayesha Jalal and Sugata Bose made the process of writing exhilarating and stimulating. This work would never have seen the light of day without their warmth, friendship, and boundless hospitality. I was lucky that my year in Harvard overlapped with the short teaching stint there of Chris Bayly who was, as always, generous with his time and ideas. His presence en­livened my stay in Harvard both intellectually and socially. Others

Preface and Acknowledgements Xlll

who made my stay in the US memorable by their friendship and intel­lectual inputs include Upinder Singh, Sunil Sharma, Robert Traverse, Durba Ghosh, MayaJasanoff, Sana Aiyar, Neeti Nair, Elaine Witham, Seung Mi Han, Zhou Xiang, Li Kang, Engseng Ho, Karim and Leila Fawaz, Shruti Kapila, Syed Akbar Hyder, Anand A. Yang, Vijay Pinch, Michael H. Fisher, Kenton and Marlie Clymer, Cheryl and Charles Martin, Indrani Chatterji, and Sumit Guha.

Over the last four years I have benefited immensely by presenting aspects of this work in numerous conferences and talks that I deliver­ed in India, Europe, and North America. I am grateful in particular to other friends and colleagues at Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Max Muller Bhawan, and Calcutta University; at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and London (SOAS) in the UK; at the Social Science Research Centre, Berlin, Germany; at Harvard University and the University of Texas, Austin; and at Illinois University, George Washington University in Washington DC, University ofWashington in Seattle, and Duke University.

Finally, my friends and family in India have been a bedrock of emo­tional support, intellectual sustenance, and warm companionship. I owe very special gratitude to my scholarly editor Rukun Advani, who combines high standards of professionalism with endearing qualities of friendship. I thank also my wonderful friends Mukul Kesavan, Shohini Ghosh, Sabeena Gadihhoke, U rna Singh, Farida Khan, Meena Bhargava, Radhika Singha, Ravi Vasudevan, Dilip Menon, Ahmed Zaheer, and Zakia Zaheer for being with me through thick and thin and accepting all my eccentricities with a smile.

My brother Nasir Alavi and sister-in-law Farah, and their two beauti­ful daughters Maryam and Ayesha, know very well how much lowe them. And of course my parents Roshan and Shariq Alavi have always been my source of inspiration and strength. Their confidence in my abili ties has given me that extra stamina to move seamlessly in a journey of intellectual pursuit. To them I dedicate this book with love.

To make this book accessible, I have not used diacritical marks but speir 'native' terms in accordance with current North Indian pro­nunciation. A glossary at the end of the book explains all such terms.