Scientific Knowledge and Religious Milieu in Qajar Iran: Negotiating Muslim and European Renaissance Medicine in the Subtleties of Healing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Historians of sciences in the Muslim world have often overlooked the role of religious circles as places for the production and circulation of scientific materials. By focusing on the case of Muhammad Karim Khan Kirmani (d. 1288/1871), this article explores how scientific learning is dealt with in the work of a leading master of the Shaykhi school. This article looks in particular at the Daqa’iq al-‘ilaj, an extensive medical treatise written in the years which saw the founding of the Dar al-Funun in Tehran. The main feature of this work is its eclecticism. It deals chiefly with Avicennian medical knowledge and is structured according to the patterns of Avicennian medical texts. In parallel, it set forth a theory of human constitution which incorporates the concepts of spagyric medicine originated from the work of the Renaissance scholar Paracelsus (d. 1541). Muhammad Karim Khan Kirmani did not just translate Paracelsus’ ideas, he domesticated them in the epistemic framework of the receiving culture. Furthermore, the Daqa’iq al-‘ilaj includes a number of traditions on medical issues drawn from the collections of the imams’ hadith. The author uses the hadiths as a flexible device: they are quoted to endorse Avicennian medical and hygienic notions; moreover, they are also used in the part which introduces the Paracelsian concept of tartar.