Iran

Iran, Science in Iran before Islam

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• published: 03 Jul 2012
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Gundishapur, , Jund-e Shapur, (means Army of Shapour), Pahlavi. Founded in 271 CE by the Sassanid king Shapur I, Gundeshapur was home to a teaching hospital, and also comprised a library and an center of higher learning. It has been identified with extensive ruins south of Shahabad, a village 14 km south-east of Dezful, to the road for Shush, in the present-day province of Khuzestan, southwest Iran. Gundeshapur was a renowned academy of learning in the city of Jondi Shapour during late antiquity, the intellectual center of the Sassanid Empire. It offered training in medicine, philosophy, theology, and science. It has been a center for training scientists for centuries. Iranian, Greek, Indian, and Roman scientists conducted studies and scientific research there. The faculty was versed not only in the Zoroastrian and Persian traditions, but in Greek and Indian learning as well. According to The Cambridge History of Iran, it was the most important medical center of the ancient world during the 6th and 7th centuries. Will Durant has lauded the Iranian civilization for having built such an academy. Einstein has praised his disciple, Professor Hesaby, for having belonged to a country where an academy had been built 1,700 years ago. Compare Iran with Arabia It could be said that Arabia as the birthplace of Islam was a poverty stricken, dry and deprived region whereas Iran or at least some parts of Iran were populated, flourishing and affluent. Incidentally, the areas of the great Iranian plateau which were contiguous to Arabia were all green and included the western slopes of the Zagross mountain range and parts of Lorestan, Bakhtaran, Hamadan and present Kurdestan, as well as part of Mesopotamia along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, all of which are green and full of palm groves, so that in those times the Arabs called these lands the Black Land's. This was so because as of the dry, sandy deserts came to this part, they would notice a dark horizon which in fact was the palm groves and other trees, whereas in their own dwelling places there were only old trees in the rarely found oases. The practice and study of medicine in Persia has a long and prolific history. The Iranian academic centers like Jundishapur University (3rd century AD) were a breeding ground for the union among great scientists from different civilizations. These centers successfully followed their predecessors' theories and greatly extended their scientific research through history. Thousand years before Islam, Iranian medical remedies using modern scientific methods. These studies raised the possibility of revival of traditional treatments on the basis of evidence-based medicine. Of all the healers O Spitama Zarathustra, namely those who heal with the knife, with herbs, and with sacred incantations, the last one is the most potent as he heals from the very source of diseases. —Ardibesht Yasht Avesta mentions several notable physicians, the most notable of Persia's ancient physicians were to emerge later on, namely: Mani, Roozbeh, and Bozorgmehr. The first teaching hospital where medical students methodically practiced on patients under the supervision of physicians was the Academy of Gundishapur in the Persian Empire. Some experts go so far as to claim that: "to a very large extent, the credit for the whole hospital system must be given to Persia" Such a biased article. Ancient Persia was never a scientifically important region. Not untill Islam came, and some of the greatest (muslim) scholars emerged from Persia: Ibn Sina, Alghazali, etc. Islam interruupted nothing. The Iranian science was interrupted by the Arab invasion (630 A.D.). Many schools, universities and libraries were destroyed, books were burned and scholars killed. Iranian scientists carried on and the science of Persia resurfaced during the Islamic period. To save the books from the Arab carnage, many Pahlavi scripts were translated into the Arabic, and Iran produced physicians and scientists as Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi and mathematicians as Kharazmi and Omar Khayyám. They collected and systematically expanded the Greek, Indian, and Persian ancient medical heritage and made further discoveries. One of the main roles played by medieval Iranian scholars in the scientific field was the conservation, consolidation, coordination and development of ideas and knowledge in ancient civilizations. Some Iranian Hakim (practitioners) such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi, known to the West as Rhazes, and Ibn Sina, better known as Avicenna, were not only responsible for accumulating all the existing information on medicine of the time, but adding to this knowledge by their own astute observations, experimentation and skills.