HIST 249 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, Abbasid Caliphate, Avicenna
Document Summary
Islamic medicine is largely a continuation and further development of the greek medicine tradition. Greek and roman medicine is made accessible through the arab translations. This translation movement in early islam is a great achievement since its creates a body of scienti c and philosophical literature in arabic, which becomes the major language for science, philosophy, and so on. The arabs had to make commentary on the things that galen and hippocrates were saying, they also wrote teaching summaries of these works that would make it easier for students to absorb. Within a generation of the translator, you start to see original medical writing in arabic on subjects that are often not deeply discussed in greek medicine. They start to branch out and write their own. Arabic medicine discoveries leading to the production of organised medical records based on. This chain of writing and commentary is important for people to continue writing and creating original literature.
