Journal for the Intellectual History of the Islamicate World
Call for papers for 2017 volume on medicine
Editors: Leigh Chipman, Peter E. Pormann, Miri Shefer-Mossensohn
Medicine in the medieval and early modern Middle East was an arena of multi-faithactivity, as the pagan authorities of late antiquity were transformed in the writings andactions of a variety of practitioners and theoreticians. We reject the ‘classical’Orientalist view of Islamic medicine as mere Arabization of Hellenistic works. Weseek here to show how Christians, Jews, Muslims and others, writing in manydifferent languages such as Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkic recastmedicine on the basis of earlier books, not necessarily Greek ones, throughtranslations, commentaries, epitomes and other forms of re-writing. While there is place for textual studies of ninth- and tenth-century translations in this volume, theemphasis will be on the so-called ‘post-classical’ period, after Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, d.1037), and up to the massive irruption of the European tradition in the late eighteenthcentury. Aiming to contribute not only new knowledge
in the field, but also fresh andup-to-date methodology, we are particularly interested in contributions studying thefollowing topics:·
the role of epitomes and commentaries on Galen and other Greek authors, aswell as of commentaries and supercommentaries on the Canon of Medicine ( Qānūn fī al-ṭibb ) and other canonical works in thedevelopment of medical theory and practice;·
the under-researched Persian and Ottoman-Turkish medical traditions;·the connections – intellectual and social – between medicine and other fieldsof knowledge, such as philosophy and law, taking into consideration the polymathic interests of many authors living in the Muslim world;·
the role of institutions in the shaping of the medical traditions;
and·the role of non-human agents.
Articles of roughly 8,000 words should be submitted via e-mail by 1 June 2015 to Leigh Chipman (leigh.chipman@gmail.com).
If you would like to contribute, please contact Leigh as soon as possible with any queries. We urge authors todiscuss possible topics informally with the editors, before submitting the finalarticle.