Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World

Abstract

This book began as a graduate seminar paper on al-Jāḥiẓ's Kitāb al-Burṣān for Professor Michael Bonner's course on classical Arabic biographical dictionaries. Set on writing a dissertation on slavery, and convinced that a study of disability would have too few primary sources, I put aside my interest in this text. However, the paper did awaken me to the idea of working on a topic that had not been so thoroughly studied as slavery. Encouraged by Dana Sajdi's fascinating work on a Chester Beatty Library manuscript of an 18th-century Damascene barber's local history, I leafed through the Chester Beatty manuscript catalogue in the hope of fi nding a singular source on which I could build a similarly interesting study. To my amazement, I stumbled across A. J. Arberry's entry for MS 3838, Ibn Fahd's 950/AD 1543 'treatise on the affl ictions suffered by famous scholars'. Only then did I begin to think a study of disability could be a possibility. With the support of the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School and the International Institute, I arranged a visit to the Chester Beatty Library in the summer of 2005. Dr Elaine Wright, curator of the library's Islamic collections, was of immeasurable assistance during my stay there and granted permission to use a library image as the cover art.My thesis adviser, Dr Kathryn Babayan, introduced me to al-Badrī's poetry anthology, which quickly led me to the other writers featured in this study. I am immensely grateful for her continued support and mentorship. Support from the National Endowment of the Humanities allowed me to work under the supervision of Dr Monica Green and Dr Emilie Savage-Smith in London in the summer of 2009. These two experts in medieval medical history helpfully introduced me to Latin and Arabic medical literature on balādhur and baldness, which has strengthened Chapters 2 and 5. My current intellectual home,