Investigating the Content of the First Iranian Medical Book in Persian: “Hidayat al-Muta’allemin fi al-Tibb”

Abstract

The Iranian cultural attitude of Samanid epoch, on top of their attention to various sciences, led to the emergence of some scientific works in Persian in this era. Under this circumstance, Al-Akhawayni Bokhari wrote the first medical book in Persian entitled Hidayat Al-Muta’allemin fi Al-Tibb. In his book, in addition to his own experiences, he benefited from the experiences of ancient physicians. This helped him to move the medical knowledge forward; he, in fact, wrote a ground piece of work in this area. This paper investigated the content of this book and revealed that the author was proficient and expert in ancient scientific resources. Taking advantage of these resources and adding his own experiences to them, he wrote a comprehensive medical book in the Islamic era. As such, in addition to various innovations employed in the book, it is shown to be an outstanding work, firstly because the book was written in Persian, known as the first Persian medical book in the Islamic era and secondly because the book took an empirical and deductive approach.

Keywords

• islam
• iran
• physicians
• hidayat al-muta’allemin fi al-tibb