Pre‐modern Islamic Medical Ethics and Graeco‐Islamic‐Jewish Embryology

Abstract

This article examines the, hitherto comparatively unexplored, reception of Greek embryology by medieval Muslim jurists. The article elaborates on the views attributed to Hippocrates (d. ca. 375 BC), which received attention from both Muslim physicians, such as Avicenna (d. 1037), and their Jewish peers living in the Muslim world including Ibn Jumay' (d. ca. 1198) and Moses Maimonides (d. 1204). The religio-ethical implications of these Graeco-Islamic-Jewish embryological views were fathomed out by the two medieval Muslim jurists Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (d. 1285) and Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1350). By putting these medieval religio-ethical discussions into the limelight, the article aims to argue for a two-pronged thesis. Firstly, pre-modern medical ethics did exist in the Islamic tradition and available evidence shows that this field had a multidisciplinary character where the Islamic scriptures and the Graeco-Islamic-Jewish medical legacy were highly intertwined. This information problematizes the postulate claiming that medieval Muslim jurists were hostile to the so-called 'ancient sciences'. Secondly, these medieval religio-ethical discussions remain playing a significant role in shaping the nascent field of contemporary Islamic bioethics. However, examining the exact character and scope of this role still requires further academic ventures.

Aligning Medical and Muslim Morality: An Islamic Bioethical Approach to Applying and Rationing Life Sustaining Ventilators in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era

“…Using Biomedical Data to Inform sharʿī Rulings Employing scientific data (both social and natural) to service Islamic rulings is not to interject modern 'alien' epistemologies into sacred law-finding activities, rather it has precedent. For example, in his discussion of embryology through Islamic scriptures and Galenic medicine, Ghaly (2014) maintains that Islamic scholars were aware of, and employed, medical knowledge of the time to arrive at religious verdicts (al-ḥukm al-sharʿī) on abortion. His investigation noted that medieval scholars such as Shihāb al-Din al-Qarāfī (d. 684/1285) and Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 750/1350), as well as their modern counterparts, mitigated perceived tensions between the truth claims of scripture and of the natural sciences.…”