Islamic medicine

Medicine in the early Abbasid world

A historical essay in the Archives of Iranian Medicine describes a renaissance of medicine in Gondi-Shapur under the Sassanid Empire (226 to 652 CE). It says physicians from there, including a Nestorian Christian dean of the medical school, moved to Baghdad after the centre of Islamic power shifted there around 750 CE and built hospitals and medical schools. The author places the Golden Age of Islam in the 8th to 13th centuries and says its medical textbooks were used for centuries in European medical schools.

An Italian-language article by Romani, read here through its English abstract only, argues that the contribution of Persia to the first Islamic hospitals should be questioned and that Eastern Christian charitable institutions deserve more attention. It places the rise of the bimaristan in Abbasid Baghdad within wider urbanisation and says the institution offered medical treatment and not only care. This is one scholar's reading, and the origins of the hospital remain a matter of historical debate.

Named physicians and their texts

The same historical essay discusses three authors of the Golden Age: Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes, 865 to 925), Ali ibn al-Abbas al-Majusi (Haly Abbas, 949 to 994) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980 to 1037). It reports that their medical texts include chapters on children's diseases and care, and that the first treatise on diseases of children was written in this period.

A neurosurgical history gives the dates of Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Albucasis) as 936 to 1013 and describes his encyclopaedia Kitab al-Tasrif, whose surgical volume covers cranial and spinal injuries. The authors translated excerpts from a modern copy of one volume. The claim in the abstract that some of his techniques remain in use is not examined here.

Prophetic medicine as a hadith genre

Perho's 1995 study in Studia Orientalia describes al-ṭibb al-nabawī (the Prophet's medicine) as hadith collections gathering sayings with dietary and medical content. In her account the genre developed from collections of uncommented hadith into medical books that set the sayings within medical theory, a stage evident in the works of al-Dhahabi, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya and Ibn Muflih in the 8th/14th century. She locates these authors in traditionalist circles in Damascus and says they did not reject Greco-Islamic medicine but combined its theory with religious concepts.

The US National Library of Medicine describes the treatises as written by clerics and not physicians. It reports that they recommended diet and simple drugs, especially honey, bloodletting and cautery but no surgery, that wine was prohibited as a medicine, and that the genre flourished between the 13th and 15th centuries alongside Greek humoral medicine. A 2020 study examines whether al-Dhahabi's text developed in interaction with Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine.

Three uses of the term

The label Islamic medicine does not name one standardised practice. In a 2010 paper in the Journal of the Islamic Medical Association of North America, Nagamia writes that most Muslim historians and physicians distinguish prophetic medicine from scientific and analytical medicine, which they call Islamic medicine, while some scholars mix the two. Perho, by contrast, calls the Prophet's medicine as presented by Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Muflih and al-Dhahabi a form of Islamic medicine. The sources therefore use the term in different ways.

Historical writing also uses the phrase Golden Age of Islamic medicine for the physicians and hospitals of roughly the 8th to 13th centuries. Because Persian, Nestorian Christian and other scholars contributed, the adjective Islamic in this usage refers to a civilisation and not to a single religious school of healing. Terms such as Arabic medicine and Arab-Islamic medicine also occur in the literature.

Prophetic medicine and Islamic bioethics

Prophetic medicine (al-ṭibb al-nabawī) is a literary genre and a body of reported advice, as described above. It differs from contemporary Islamic bioethics, which a CMAJ review by Daar and al Khitamy describes as derived from principles, duties and rights within a framework of values drawn from revelation and tradition, and linked to interpretation of Islamic law. The same article says Muslims differ in background and observance, so a clinician should avoid a stereotyped approach to Muslim patients.

Hijama and related labels

Al-Hijama is the name used in the Qatari study cited below for cupping therapy, which its authors describe as widely practised in Asian and Middle Eastern cultures. Cupping also appears in medical literature as a general technique, wet or dry, and results from that literature are not specific to hijama as a religious practice. This record does not treat Unani medicine or Sufi healing, which are separate subjects, and the sources reviewed here do not compare them.

No single practice

Because the term covers a historical medical system, a literary genre and a set of contemporary uses, there is no single session format. Historical hospitals and medical schools belong to the classical period. Present-day uses described in the sources reviewed are individual remedies, including honey and black seed, and cupping offered at community centres. The sources reviewed do not describe a standard consultation or a professional pathway called Islamic medicine.

Content of prophetic medicine texts

The National Library of Medicine says the treatises advise on diet, simple drugs, honey, bloodletting and cautery. Nagamia, who chairs the International Institute of Islamic Medicine, adds that many reported remedies are spiritual, such as recitation of Qur'anic verses and supplication, and that some books contain talismans and rituals. He states that the intended readers were often people without access to scientific medicine and that most authors were theologians and religious leaders and not practising doctors. His paper is an Islamic perspective piece and should be read as a position within the tradition.

Hijama in community settings

A cross-sectional study surveyed 120 Al-Hijama practitioners working at five cupping community centres in Qatar with a self-administered questionnaire on background and safety practices. It reports that practitioners were not uniform in their routines and that hand hygiene, equipment sterilisation, disposable lancets and documentation were often neglected. The study reports what practitioners said they did, and it does not describe what a client experiences.

Traditional and practitioner claims

Within prophetic medicine, Nagamia describes health, hygiene, prevention and the treatment of minor ailments, and he presents honey, black seed (Nigella sativa) and cupping-related advice as examples of household and herbal remedies. He also says ritual prayer and supplication were used in illness, and he credits the Prophet with documented accounts of relief. These are attributed claims from a tradition-based article and not test results. Nagamia himself concludes that physicians should neither endorse nor reject such remedies because there is too little research.

Uses that have been studied

Some individual remedies named in the prophetic literature have been tested under modern conditions. Honey has been compared with no treatment, placebo and cough medicines for acute cough in children. Black seed has been tested for weight, blood pressure, blood glucose and related markers. A combination of honey and Nigella sativa has been tested as an add-on in mild or moderate COVID-19, and cupping has been tested for low back pain. Each trial answers a narrow question about one preparation, dose, comparator and outcome, and none tests the tradition as a whole.

Honey for acute cough in children

A Cochrane review (searches to February 2018) included six randomised trials with 899 children aged 12 months to 18 years with acute cough in ambulatory settings. Honey probably reduced cough frequency more than no treatment (mean difference -1.05 on a 7-point scale, 2 studies, 154 children) and more than placebo (-1.62, 95% confidence interval -3.02 to -0.22, 2 studies, 402 children), both with moderate-certainty evidence. Compared with dextromethorphan the effect was similar, with low-certainty evidence.

Reviewers noted that most children were treated for one night, that two studies had high risk of performance and detection bias, and that evidence for or against honey was not strong. Two trials were supported by honey boards, and the results do not test prophetic medicine.

Black seed and cardiometabolic markers

A 2026 meta-analysis of 31 trials with 2,145 participants who had metabolic diseases found lower weight (-1.59 kg), body mass index, blood pressure (systolic -3.25 mmHg) and fasting glucose (-18.62 mg/dL) with Nigella sativa, but no effect on waist circumference, insulin resistance or insulin. The full text reports high heterogeneity (I-squared 74.1 to 99.5 percent), trials of 4 to 24 weeks, and certainty from high to very low by outcome.

A larger 2025 review of 82 randomised trials with 5,026 participants (1 to 48 weeks, 200 to 4,600 mg a day) reported improvements across many anthropometric, glycaemic, lipid and inflammatory markers and used GRADE certainty ratings. Only the abstract was read, so certainty by outcome is not reported. Marker changes are not clinical events.

Honey with Nigella sativa and COVID-19

A 2026 network meta-analysis of traditional, complementary and integrative therapies for mild or moderate acute COVID-19 (155 eligible trials, 69 analysed) reported that honey and Nigella sativa as an add-on to standard care probably shortened time to symptom resolution (mean difference -3.00 days, 95% confidence interval -4.12 to -1.88, moderate certainty) and to fever resolution (-4.00 days, moderate certainty). It was a combination, networks were sparse, and replication was called for. It does not apply to either ingredient alone.

Cupping and the limits of transfer

A 2024 systematic review of cupping for low back pain pooled 11 trials with 921 participants. Pain improved at the 2 to 8 week endpoint but not at one month or at 3 to 6 months, and moderate- to low-quality evidence showed no reduction in chronic low back pain. Wet cupping showed a significant effect at the endpoint where dry cupping did not, but cupping type was not shown to explain the differences. The authors raised concerns about certainty given high heterogeneity.

A 2023 review of 22 studies of cupping in musculoskeletal and sports conditions found that most used dry cupping and only five used wet cupping, and graded evidence for low back or neck pain as low to moderate. These reviews do not assess hijama as practised in Muslim communities. Searches run for this record found no controlled study or review of Islamic medicine or prophetic medicine as a whole system.

Historical and religious critique

Nagamia reports that Ibn Khaldun (1332 to 1406) distinguished the medicine mentioned in religious tradition from medicine based on natural principles. In the passage Nagamia quotes, Ibn Khaldun describes it as a Bedouin type of medicine based on custom, not part of revelation, and not laid down by religious law. Ibn Qayyim, according to the same paper, held that the sayings are not divine injunctions but guidance towards a common-sense approach to health. Views within Islamic scholarship on the status of these remedies are therefore not uniform.

Limits of the evidence

Trials of honey, black seed and cupping were not designed to test religious claims and often compare short courses against inactive or usual-care comparators. Several black seed reviews pool trials with very different doses and durations, and the Cochrane honey review includes trials supported by honey boards. A reader should not infer from a positive laboratory or symptom outcome that a tradition, a text or a practitioner's advice is validated, nor from a null or uncertain result that a cultural practice has no meaning for those who follow it.

Honey, black seed and adverse effects

The Cochrane review states that honey use in infants under 12 months is restricted because of poor immunity against Clostridium botulinum, a possible honey contaminant. In the trials, adverse events included nervousness, insomnia and hyperactivity in 9.3 percent of children given honey and 2.7 percent given dextromethorphan, and gastrointestinal symptoms in 12 percent of children given honey and 11 percent given placebo. The black seed reviews read for this record did not provide adverse-event data that could be summarised, so nothing is stated here about its interactions or long-term safety.

Hygiene in cupping

In the Qatari survey, roughly half of the 120 practitioners did not follow established safety guidelines, and hand hygiene, sterilisation of equipment, use of disposable lancets and documentation were frequently neglected. The authors called for regular training and standard safety protocols. A 2023 review of cupping in musculoskeletal conditions reported a very low incidence of adverse events, but most included studies used dry cupping and not the skin-cutting wet form. A person considering wet cupping can ask how equipment is cleaned and whether lancets are single-use.

Care boundaries, training and regulation

The sources reviewed give no reason to delay or replace necessary medical assessment with any of these remedies, and serious, persistent or worsening symptoms call for professional assessment. Nagamia notes that the Prophet is reported to have directed companions to doctors, and Daar and al Khitamy describe Islamic bioethics as attentive to physical, mental and spiritual dimensions and to respect for the patient. No statutory regulation or training standard for Islamic medicine or prophetic medicine as a practice was found in the sources reviewed, and requirements for cupping practitioners differ by jurisdiction.