Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, Doutes sur Galien, introduction, edition and French translation by Pauline Koetschet (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), cxxxviii-347 p.

Abstract

Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, Doutes sur Galien, introduction, edition and French translation by Pauline Koetschet (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), cxxxviii-347 p. One of the crucial questions often posed concerning the natural sciences of the Islamicate Middle Ages is that of their innovativeness. Especially regarding medicine, it was a commonplace point of criticism since the early modern period that its protagonists only preserved the achievements of Classical Antiquity without further developments. Modern research has challenged this theory pointing out that the medieval Arabs did not follow the ideas of Galen – by far the most prominent ancient medical authority – unquestioned in all circumstances. One of the principal works of this genre is Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī’s (d. ca. 313/925) Shukūk ʿalā Jālīnūs (“Doubts about Galen”), which has now been edited anew by Pauline Koetschet. Her edition accompanied by a superb French translation and rich annotations makes this fundamental medicophilosophical work for the first time accessible to a wider scientific public. Galen, who is famous for his claim that “the best physician must be a philosopher”, often dealt with philosophy in his medical works and wrote monographs on this topic, such as a lost voluminous book on logic entitled Περὶ ἀποδείξεως / Kitāb al-burhān and several others 1. These works, often contradicting classical Aristotelian approaches, aroused criticism already during his lifetime, when Alexander of