Food for Healthy Bodies: A Glimpse from Arab Heritage
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There is no doubt that food is the key to healthy bodies. This is why the Arab heritage is abound with manuscripts that tackle the cure of many diseases using food; or eliminating diseases by following a specific diet as a pre-stage to using medical prescriptions of combination drug, or both together. Moreover, Muslim scholars divided food and beverages as useful or harmful to the body, describing their impacts; not only because they knew the importance of food for the body’s health, but also for the treatment of several diseases.
We find the statement of Najib al-Din Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Samarqandi (d. 619 AH/1222 CE) in the introduction of his book The Book of Food and Drink for the Healthy: “I gathered the words of Galen and his commentators hearsays on food and all what human eats that are anthropologically beneficial, and the properties of each. All I found was documented in this volume.” In his book, al-Samarqandi classified food and drinks, and their impacts on the body. He started with describing grains, followed by meat, eggs, milk, fruits, legumes, and ended up by spices. Then al-Samarqandi classified drinks, starting with water. He also tackled food and drinks recipes, and their usages in treatments for healthy bodies.
In the seventh Hijri century, we find abu Al-Hassan Ala-al-din Ali ibn Abi-Hazm al-Qarshi, known as Ibn al-Nafis (d. 687 AH/1288 CE)—the discoverer of the pulmonary circulation—who wrote a book for the same purpose, entitled The Choice of Foodstuffs. He presented in his book the food that we should eat during illness, and described which led to overweight or underweight. That is in addition to his leading contributions in the field.
Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah ibn Sina (427 AH/1037 CE)—also known as al-Sheikh al-Rais (meaning leader among wise men), and by the Latinized version of his name Avicenna—had a famous quote that stated: “Beware of overeating; food debris are the reason for most illnesses”. He presented different food types in his book Repelling All Harm from Human Bodies, which he authored in seven treatises. The fourth treatise was concerned with food, its types, and harmful effects on human health. Moreover, ibn Sina also tackled different types of food, their harms, and their usages in healing in his famous book The Canon of Medicine, which was regarded as the main curriculum for Western universities, and which he later summarized in a poem entitled The Medical Poem.
Likewise, the botanist and pharmacist ibn al-Baitar abu Muhammad Diya al-Din al-Malaqi (d. 645 AH/1248 CE) was one of the greatest Medieval scholars. Born in Málaga, educated in Seville and lived in Egypt, ibn al-Baitar passed away in Damascus at the age of 49, after he was poisoned by a plant tested for producing medicine. He authored his book The Compendium on Simple Medicaments and Foods for the same purpose, which is treatment using medicine and food.
Ibn al-Baitar also discovered a plant named Hindiba—Cichorium is its scientific name—for curing cancer. We may contemplate his words cited in his book, which identify the modern approach rules of scientific research: “I only considered what proved right by observation and experiment, and I excluded what is opposite to opinions, procedures, sensory observations, and essence of the right”.
If we go back to the third and fourth Hijri centuries, we will be dazzled by “one of the greatest humanitarian physicians of all times” as described by the Orientalist Sigrid Hunke: al-Razi Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya (d. 313 AH/925 CE). Al-Razi authored The Comprehensive Book on Medicine (also known in English as The Virtuous Life), which lasted as a medical reference in Europe for 400 years. He also amazes us by his book Food and Its Harmfulness, which he concluded by a chapter about choosing useful and appropriate food for human health after he categorized eating and food and their effect.
Al-Razi is also the author of Treating the Diseases by Food and Drugs, which included 37 chapters, in which he presented treatment methods using diet and medicines for diseases, such as headache, epilepsy, forgetfulness, mind corruption, and eye ailments. By mind corruption here, he meant mental and psychological diseases, after he presented body diseases “from head to feet”, as he described.
Furthermore, we have several books in our Arab heritage, in which the authors tackled the principles of proper nutrition, diet regimes, measures for getting rid of obesity and overweight, treating underweight, and that is what is newly called dietary treatment. We may recall, for example, Diets by Abu-Zakariya Yahya ibn Masawaih (d. 243 AH/857 CE), Healthy Measures Relating to Food and Drinks by Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 260 AH/873 CE), and Poem in Food and Antidote by Lisan ad-Din ibn al-Khatib (d. 776 AH/1374 CE).
On the other hand, the Arab civilization knew recipes for food preparation, presentation and etiquette, but we cannot state them all here. Yet, we could mention Proper Conduct in Eating by ibn Imad al-Din al-Aqfahsi (d. 808 AH/1405 CE) and Foodstuffs Measures by Al-Kindi (265 AH/873 CE). At the end, I would like you to remember the common saying: “The stomach is the home of disease and restraint is the basis of remedy”.
This article was first published in print in SCIplanet, Autumn 2015 issue.
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