The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual

The medical section of the Kitb al-Naatayn or Book of the Two Pieces of Advice by the medieval author cAbd al-Laf ibn Ysuf al-Baghdd (1162-1231) challenges the idea that Arabic-Islamic medicine declined after the twelfth century A.D. Moreover, it offers some interesting insights into the social history of medicine. cAbd al-Laf composed his work as a diatribe directed against false knowledge, and employed the framework of Greek medical epistemology to criticize the rationalist physicians of his day and age. He argued that female and itinerant practitioners, relying on experience, were superior to some rationalists, and decried the wickedness and incompetence of certain medical practitioners of his time. In addition, he lambasted contemporaneous medical education because it put too much faith in a restricted number of textbooks such as the Canon of Medicine by the celebrated physician Ibn Sn (Avicenna), or chiefly relied on imperfect abridgments. The medical section of the Book of the Two Pieces of Advice is translated here for the first time in a modern language. It is preceded by a lengthy introduction that highlights cAbd al-Lafs complicated relation to both medicine and alchemy. The present study also contains the first full bibliography on cAbd al-Laf ibn Ysuf al-Baghdd and his milieu.