Islamic science
history has a long history of its own. Comparing the historiography of Islamic
science in western Asia to the
historiography of Chinese science in eastern Asia is illuminating because of some basic similarities,
at least during large parts of the twentieth century. The principals that
governed these histories in the mid-twentieth century were text based
narratives of heroes, successes, and discoveries, of progress and Islamic
science have also asked the question that improvement of the quality of life.
Al-damanhuri was
a typical scholar of his time in his diversified scholarly interests, balancing
practical science with religious scholarship. It seems, however ,that his
contemporaries were impressed by the
number of spheres he combined and with the extent of his command of all
of them, not by his integration of spheres of knowledge that were seemingly
(perhaps wrongly in modern opinion) very remote from one another.
Furthermore, he
come from humble origin as an orphan from rural lower
Egypt who did
not enjoy the background makes his success even more extraordinary, and this
tells us about social and political patterns of career paths, and the bond
between vast scholarly expertise and upward mobility.
The popularity
and importance attributed to bodies of knowledge changed from time to time. Similarly,
the degree of popularity of the combinations was neither fixed nor inflexible.
We learn this,
for example, from the fact during different periods,the character of the person
described in the sources as the ideal physician(al-tabib al kamil) was depicted
differently. The Arabic sources in the middle ages present the
physician-philosopher as the ideal combination. They used the Greek model of
ancient times to create a contemporary model and quoted galen (Aelius
Galenus),the Greek physician and Philosopher who lived in the second century.
Galen influenced
medicine in the Middle east and Europe for hundereds of years beyond his life
time with his articulate presentation of the synthesis of various medical
theories that were based on the theory of tempramentsand humors and the need
for physical and mental equilibrium. among this many influential treaties is a
short essay promoting a training program that Galen initiated to be executed in the future, for the best physician, who is
also Philosopher.
