Abu Bakr al-Razi
Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi, known as Al-Razi, as Ar-Razi or (in Latin) as Rhazes and Rasis, (864-930 AD) was an Iranian* polymath who contributed much to the fields of medicine and chemistry. He was also significant in the field of philosophy.
Although it is widely believed that Razi was an Arab, this is a misconception. He spoke Persian, he was born and died in Iran, and lived in the Persian Empire. (Note that many other Persian figures have mistakenly been regarded as Arabs, such as Avicenna, Biruni, Khwarazmi/Al-Khwarizmi and many others, although they were not Arabs.)
He discovered alcohol, the use of alcohol in medicine, and he also discovered Sulfuric acid. He was born in Rayy (Rages) (actually, in Persian language "Razi" means from the city of Ray), an ancient city located near Tehran, Iran, and pursued a great amount of his research there. (Note that Avicenna also lived in Ray for a period of time.) Many also claim that he was the first to say that the world is round. Razi was the cheif physician at the Baghdad hospital where he formulated the first known description of small pox. He was also the first physician to realize that fever was a natural defense mechanism, the body’s way of fighting disease.
His greatest work is the Continens Liber (The Continent) which terminated his practice of medicine. The book thoroughly offended a Muslim priest who Razi had apparently contardicted somewhere in his massive book. The priest ordered that Razi be beaten over the head with the manuscript until one of them broke. Razi's head broke while the manuscript remained intact. The result was permanent blindness for Rhazes and the end of his medical career.
He is considered one of the greatest if not the greatest alchemist of all time and his work remained in use for over 10 centuries. Razi wrote 184 books and articles, in several fields of science.
His books and articles are named by Ibn Abi Asi`boed. His book The Large Comprehensive which is known as The Embody is credited as a most important Medical Encyclopedia. He has considerations and criticism on the Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, he also expressed innovative and projecting views on divinity and metaphysics.
The Transmutaion of Metals
Razi's interest in alchemy and his strong belief in the possibility of transmutation of lesser metals to silver and gold was confirmed half a century after his death by Ibn an-Nadim (The Philosophers Stone). He attributed a series of twelve books to ar-Razi, then seven more, including his refutation to al-Kindi's denial of the validity of alchemy, and finally, ar- Razi's two best known alchemical texts; al-Asrar and Sirr al-Asrar (the secrets, and secret of secrets). These two works were not only among ar-Razi's last publications on alchemy, but they superseded his earlier ones as the final representation of his alchemical teachings. The latter text incorporates much of the former (al-Asrar).
It has been told that one night in the midst of delivering a speech General Simjur confronted Razi and questioned:
Oh conversant one who’s keen is vast; bravery is what you lack. In Rayy I had heard that you are capable of transmuting metals and that from iron and copper you bring about gold. I had heard that this is the reason for which you do not charge your patients. Is it true?
It appeared to those present that Razi was reluctant to answer; he looked eccentrically at the general and replied:
I understand alchemy and I have been working on the characteristic properties of metals for an extended time. However, it still has not turned out to be evident to me, how one can transmute gold from copper. Despite the research from the furthermost scientists that have undergone in the past centuries, there has been no reply. I very much doubt if it is possible...
(From: "Mohammad Zakaria Razi" by Khosro Moetazed, Translated by: Alireza Hashemi)
While conducting these alchemical experiments Rhazes developed many modern laboratory instruments that still remain in use today. Rhazes is known to have experimented more precisely by methods of distillation and extraction. Therefore, a survey of the Sirr al-Asrar will hopefully throw some light on Razi's rational approach and technical procedures, which represent the highest expression of alchemical knowledge during this period. Ofcourse the greatest of his contributions was his development of mineral acids and alcohol. Alchemists of the time had always thought of ways of transforming people into more perfect human beings and their alchemical desires helped them learn the use of medicine.
Rhazes discovered Sulfuric Acid and influenced other Islamic alchemists of the time such as Geber to work on mineral acids.
Al-Asrar
The book was written in response to a request from Razi's close friend, colleague, and former student, Abu Mohammed b. Yunis of Bukhara, a Muslim mathematician, philosopher, and ia natural scientist of good stature In Sirr al-Asrar, Razi divides his subject matter into three categories as he did in his book al-Asrar.
- Knowledge and identification of drugs from plant, animal, and mineral origins and the choicest type of each for utilization in treatment.
- Knowledge of equipment and tools used, which are of interest to both the alchemist and the apothecary.
- Knowledge of the seven alchemical procedures and techniques such as sublimation and condensation of mercury, precipitation of sulphur and arsenic calcination of minerals (gold, silver, copper, lead, and iron), salts, glass, talc, shells, and waxing.
This last category contains, in addition, a description of other methods and piratical applications used in transmutation: the admixture and uses of solvent vehicles, the amount of heat (fire) used, 'bodies and stones' that can or cannot be transformed into corporal substances of metals at Id salts, and the liquid mordant that quickly and permanently color lesser metals for better sales and profits.
Similar to the discussion on the third/ninth-century text on amalgams ascribed to Jabir, Razi describes methods and procedures or coloring (gold leafing) a silver object to imitate gold. Also described is the reverse technique for removing the color and returning it to silver. Gilding and silvering of other metals ( alum, calcium salts, iron, copper, and tutty) are also described, as well as how colors will stay for years without tarnishing or changing. The procedures involved no deceptive motive, but rather technical and economic deliberations. This is evident from the author's quotation of market prices and the technical triumph of artisan, craftsman, or alchemist in declaring the results of their efforts so that 'it will look exactly like gold! There was, however, another similar motive involved, namely, to manufacture something to resemble gold for easy sale to help a good friend who happen to be in need of quick money. It could be due to this trend in Razi's alchemical technique for silvering and gilding of metal that many Muslim biographers concluded that he was first a jeweler before he turned to alchemy.
Of interest in the text is Razi's classification of minerals into six divisions, giving his discussion a modern chemical connotation:
- Four spirits: mercury, sal ammoniac, sulphur, and arsenic.
- Seven bodies; silver, gold, copper, iron, black lead (plumbago), zinc, and tin.
- Thirteen stones including marcasite, magnesia, malachite, tutty, talcum, lapis lazuli, gypsum, and glass (then identified as as made of sand and alkali of which the transparent crystal Damascene is considered the best).
- Seven vitriols including alum, and white, black, red, and yellow vitriols (the impure sulphates of iron, copper, etc.).
- Seven borates including the tinkar, natron, and impure sodium borate.
- Eleven salts including brine, common (table) salt, ashes, naphtha, live lime, and urine, rock, and sea salts. Then he separately defines and describes each of these
substances and their choicest kinds and colors and possible adulterations.
Concerning the tools and equipment of the alchemist, Razi classifies them into two kinds:
- Utensils used for the dissolving and melting of bodies such as the furnace, bellows, crucible, holder (tongue or ladle), macerator, pot, stirring rod, cutter, and grinder.
- Utensils used to carry out the operation of transmutation, such as the retort, alembic, receiver, other parts of the distilling apparatus, oven (stove), cups, bottles, jars, pans, and blowers.
Ibn an-Nadim also identifies briefly the five areas in which Razi distinguished himself:
- Razi was recognized as the best physician of his time who had fully absorbed Greek medical learning.
- He traveled in many lands. His repeated visits to Baghdad and his services to many princes and rulers are known from many sources.
- He was a medical educator who attracted many students, both beginners and advanced.
- He was compassionate, kind, upright, and devoted to the service of his patients whether rich or poor.
- He was a prolific reader and writer and authored many books, the titles of which were cited by Ibn an-Nadim and other Muslim biobibliographers of physicians and philosophers.
Written by Razi The "al-Judari wa al-Hasbah" was the first book on smallpox, and was translated over a dozen times into Latin and other European languages. Its lack of dogmatism and its Hippocratic reliance on clinical observation show Razi's medical methods.
"The eruption of the smallpox is preceeded by a continued fever, pain in the back, itching in the nose and terrors in the sleep. These are the more peculiar symptoms of its approach, especially a pain in the back with fever; then also a pricking which the patient feels all over his body; a fullness of the face, which at times comes and goes; an inflamed color, and vehement redness in both cheeks; a redness of both the eyes, heaviness of the whole body; great uneasiness, the symptoms of which are stretching and yawning; a pain in the throat and chest, with slight difficulty in breathing and cough; a dryness of the breath, thick spittle and hoarseness of the voice; pain and heaviness of the head; inquietude, nausea and anxiety; (with this difference that the inquietude, nausea and anxiety are more frequent in the measles than in the smallpox; while on the other hand, the pain in the back is more peculiar to the smallpox than to the measles;) heat of the whole body; an inflamed colon, and shining redness, especially an intense redness of the gums."
Doubts About Galen
Rhazes's independent mind is strikingly revealed in his Shukuk 'ala "alinusor 'Doubts about Galen'.
"In the manner of numerous Greek thinkers, including Socrates and Aristotle, Rhazes rejected the mind-body dichotomy and pioneered the concept of mental health and self-esteem as essential to a patient’s welfare. This “sound mind, healthy body” connection prompted him to frequently communicate with his patients on a friendly level, encouraging them to heed his advice as a path to their recovery and bolstering their fortitude and determination to resist the illness and swiftly convalesce." G. Stolyarov II
In 'Doubts about Galen' Razi rejects claims of Galen's, from the alleged superiority of the Greek language to many of his cosmological and medical views. He places medicine within philosophy, inferring that sound practice demands independent thinking. His own clinical records, he reports, do not confirm Galen's descriptions of the course of a fever. And in some cases he finds that his clinical experience exceeds Galen's. He rejects the notion, central to the theory of humours, that the body is warmed or cooled only by warmer or cooler bodies; for a warm drink may heat the body to a degree much hotter than its own. Thus the drink must trigger a response rather than simply communicating its own warmth or coldness. This line of criticism has the potential, in time, to bring down the whole theory of humours and the scheme of the four elements, on which it was grounded. Razi's alchemy, like his medical thinking, struggles within the cocoon of hylomorphism. It dismisses the idea of potions and dispenses with an appeal to magic, if magic means reliance on symbols as causes. But Razi does not reject the idea that there are wonders in the sense of unexplained phenomena in nature. His alchemical stockroom, accordingly, is enriched with the products of Persian mining and manufacture, and the Chinese discovery, sal ammoniac. Still reliant on the idea of dominant forms or essences and thus on the Neoplatonic conception of causality as inherently intellectual rather than mechanical, Razi's alchemy nonetheless brings to the fore such empiric qualities as salinity and inflammability-the latter ascribed to 'oiliness' and 'sulphuriousness'. Such properties are not readily explained by the traditional fire, water, earth and air schematism, as al-óhazali and other later comers, primed by thoughts like Razi's, were quick to note.
Many accused him of ignorance, since he criticized Galen's work greatly. However, Razi repeatedly expressed praises and gratitude to Galen for his commendable contributions and labors, saying:
- "I prayed to God to direct and lead me to the truth in writing this book. It grieves me to oppose and criticize the man Galen from whose sea of knowledge I have drawn much. Indeed, he is the master and I am the servant (disciple). But all this reverence and appreciation will and should not prevent me from doubting, as I did, what is erroneous among his theories. I imagine and feel deep in my heart that Galen has chosen me to undertake this task, and if he was alive, he would have congratulated me on what I am doing. I say this because Galen's aim was to seek and find the truth and to bring light out of darkness. Indeed I wish he was alive to read what I have published."
Thereafter, Razi, with a view to vindicate Galen's greatness and to justify his criticism of him, lists four reasons why great men make errors more than others:
- Because of negligence, as a result of too much self confidence.
- Because of unmindfulness (indifference) which often leads to errors.
- Because of enticements to follow one's Own fancy or impetuosity in imagining that what he does or says is right.
- Crystallization of ancient knowledge in view of the dynamic nature of science so that present day knowledge must of necessity surpass that of previous generations. This is because of the continuous discoveries of new data and new truths. Razi believed, and rightly so, that contemporary scientists and scholars, because of accumulated knowledge at their disposal. are, by far, better equipped, more knowledgeable, and competent than the ancients. Indeed, what Razi did in attempting to overthrow blind reverence and the unchallenged authority of ancient sages was, by itself, a great step in the right direction. This impetus encouraged and stimulated research and advances in the arts, 'technology, and the sciences. It unshackled the human spirit for greater and more fasting achievements.
On the professional level, Razi introduced many useful, progressive, medical and psychological ideas. He also attacked charlatans and fake doctors who roamed the cities and the countryside selling their nostrums and 'cures'. At the same time, he warned that even highly educated doctors did not have the answers for all medical problems and could not cure all sicknesses or heal every disease. Humanly speaking, this is an impossibility. Nonetheless, to be more useful in their services and truer to their calling, Razi exhorted practitioners to keep up with advanced knowledge by Continually studying medical books and expose themselves to new information. He further classified diseases into three categories: those which are curable; those that can be cured; and those which are incurable. On the latter, he cited advanced cases of cancer and leprosy which if not cured, the doctor should not take blame. Then, on the humorous side, Razi pitied physicians caring for the well being of princes, nobility, and women, for they did not obey doctor's orders for restricted diet and medical treatment, thus making most difficult the task of their doctor.
This writer is inclined to believe that Razi was the first in Islam to deliberately Write a book - home medical (remedial) advisor - entitled Man la Yahduruhu Tab for the general public. He dedicated it to the poor, the traveler, and the ordinary citizen who could consult it for treatment of common ailments when a doctor was not available. This book, of course, is of special interest to the history of pharmacy since books on the same theme continued to appear and has found acceptance by readers to the present century. In its 36 chapters, Razi described diets and drugs that can be found practically every where in apothecary shops, the market place, in well-equipped kitchens, and in military camps. Thus, any intelligent mature person can follow its instructions and prepare the right recipes for good results.
Some of the illnesses treated are headaches, colds, coughing, melancholy, and diseases of the eye, ear, and stomach. In a feverish headache, for example, he prescribed, 'two parts of the duhn (oily extract) of rose, to be mixed with part of vinegar, in which a piece of linen cloth is dipped and compressed on the forehead'. For a laxative, he recommended 'seven drams of dried violet flowers with twenty pears, macerated and mixed well, then strained. To the filtrate, twenty drams of sugar is added for a draft'. In cases of melancholy, he invariably recommended prescriptions including either poppies or their juices (opium) or clover dodder (Curcuma epithymum Muss.) or both. For an eye remedy, he recommended myrrh, saffron, and frankincense, two drams each to be mixed with one dram of yellow arsenic and made into tablets. When used each tablet was to be dissolved in a sufficient quantity of coriander water and used as eye drops.
Although he has been regarded to as Razi in the current text, his actual Latin name was Rhazes. He has also been called Al-Razi, Ar-Razi or even Rasis.
Philosophy
Razi beleived that the competent physician must also be a philosopher well versed in the fundemental questions regarding existance: "He proclaimed the absolutism of Euclidean space and mechanical time as the commonsense basis for the world in which men lived, but resolved the dilemma of existent infinities by synthesizing this outlook with the atomic theory of Democritus, which recognized that matter existed in the form of indivisible and fathomable quanta. The continuity of space, however, holds due to the existence of void, or a region lacking matter... This is remarkably close to the systems yielded by the discoveries of such later European scientists as John Dalton and Max Planck, as well as the observational and theoretical works of modern astronomer Halton Arp and Objectivist philosopher Michael Miller. Progress, in the view of all these men, is not to be obstructed by a jumble of haphazard and contradictory relativistic assertions which result in metaphysical hodge-podge instead of a sturdy intellectual base. Even in regard to the task of the philosopher, Rhazes considered it to be progressing beyond the level of one’s teachers, expanding the accuracy and scope of one’s doctrine, and individually elevating oneself onto a higher intellectual plane." G. Stolyarov II
Rhazes is known to be the most free-thinking of Islamic philosophers, since he was well-trained in the Greek sciences. He was also well versed in the musical theory, as were many other Islamic scientists of the time, although his approach in chemistry was naturalistic.
Metaphysics
His ideas on metaphysics were also based on the works of the great greeks: "The metaphysical doctrine of al-Razi, insofar as it can be reconstructed, derives from his concept of the five eternal principles. God, for him, does not 'create' the world from nothing but rather arranges a universe out of pre-existing principles. His account of the soul features a mythic origin of the world in which God out of pity fashions a physical playground for the soul in response to its own desires; the soul, once fallen into the new realm God has made for it, requires God's further gift of intellect in order to find its way once more to salvation and freedom. In this scheme, intellect does not appear as a separate principle but is rather a later grace of God to the soul; the soul becomes intelligent, possessed of reason and therefore able to discern the relative value of the other four principles. Whereas the five principles are eternal, intellect as such is apparently not. Such a doctrine of intellect is sharply at odds with that of all of Razi's philosophical contemporaries, who are in general either adherents of some form of Neoplatonism or of Aristotelianism. The remaining three principles, space, matter and time, serve as the non-animate components of the natural world. Space is defined by the relationship between the individual particles of matter, or atoms, and the void that surrounds them. The greater the density of material atoms, the heavier and more solid the resulting object; conversely, the larger the portion of void, the lighter and less solid. Time and matter have both an absolute, unqualified form and a limited form. Thus there is an absolute matter - pure extent - that does not depend in any way on place, just as there is a time, in this sense, that is not defined or limited by motion. The absolute time of al-Razi is, like matter, infinite; it thus transcends the time which Aristotle confined to the measurement of motion. Razi, in the cases of both time and matter, knew well how he differed from Aristotle and also fully accepted and intended the consequences inherent in his anti-Peripatetic positions." Paul E. Walker Although it is quite evident that most of his thoughts derived from Islam.
References and further reading
Walker, P. (1992) 'The Political Implications of al-Razi's Philosophy', in C. Butterworth (ed.) The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 61-94.
Motazed, K. 'Mohammad Zakaria Razi'
Quotes from Rhazes
" Let your first thought be to strengthen the natural vitality."