by Nayab Naseer

Created on: March 14, 2009

The term Unani is derived from 'Unan', which means 'Greece' in Arabic and Urdu.

As the name indicates, the Unani system of Medicine originated in ancient Greece, and bases itself on the teachings of Hippocrates (460-377 BC), the father of medicine, and his disciple Galen (131-210 CE). However, when the Greek civilization decayed, their system of medicine also faded into insignificance.

The Unani system of medicine had to wait for another millennium, until the rise and spread of the Abbasid Empire in West Asia before people started taking interest in it.

Jundishapur, a city in Persia was originally a settlement of Greek prisoners, whose descendents had lived on. When Caliph Umar's army annexed the city to the Islamic empire, this city already had a large hospital and a medical school that still thrived on the ancient Greek way. Later, the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, the founder of the city of Baghdad, invited the then head of the Jundishapur medical School to treat him. This physician Jirjis Bukhtishu treated the Caliph successfully and thereby became the court physician. Though he returned to Jundishapur before his death, the migration to Baghdad had begun. Jirjis' son Jibrail Bukhtishu established his practice in the city and became a prominent physician. By this time (the 8th century CE); the fame of Baghdad began to rise, as did the political power of the Abbasids. With the defeat of the Byzantines, the successors to the ancient Greeks, many of their ancient works fell into Arab hands, and found translation from Greek and Latin to Arabic. Such manuscripts included works of Hippocrates and Galen. The caliph established many hospitals and medical centers and patronized research, culminating in the golden era of the Unani system of medicine.

The most influential figures in this golden era were Rhazes (850-920 CE) and Avicenna (980-1037 CE), who took over from where the Greek masters left off.

Under the Abbasid Empire, cities like Shiraz, Tebriz and Galan were the main centers of Unani research. However, the Mongol conquest of Central Asia and Persia in the 13th Century led to a complete destruction of these cities and an end to the Persian-Arab Islamic civilization. The few remaining scholars who survived fled to India, the only remaining Muslim sultanate in the area. They were fortunate the get the state patronage of the Khilji and Tughlaq sultans of Delhi, and later the Mughal emperors and soon Delhi became the most important center of Unani medicine in the world.

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