Encyclopedia of Islamic Herbal Medicine (review)

John Andrew Morrow's Encyclopedia of Islamic Herbal Medicine presents the reader with a description of about 100 medicinal herbs mentioned in the Qur'an and recorded in the hadiths of the Prophet and the akhbar of the Twelve Imams. The individual herbs are identified and provided with a description of their properties and uses. The herbs are organized alphabetically by their English common name but by using the index, it is possible to find the herbs using their Arabic and Latin names as well. The book is aimed at a Western audience (17). As the author notes, 'Islamic herbalism and Sufi healing have a negligible presence in the alternative health care market in the Western world' (5). It may be assumed, therefore, that Morrow's book is intended to do its part in improving the situation. The readers the author had in mind are thus Westerners interested in, or working within, herbal traditions.

In the introduction (3-28), the author defines his concept of 'Islamic Herbal Medicine', stating that it consists solely of the herbs 'revealed in the Qur'an and found in the Sunnah [and] noted by the Twelve Imams' (3). Thus he draws a clear line distinguishing his 'Islamic Herbal Medicine' from both the historical Arabic-Islamic medicine and the current Unani medicine, practiced in Pakistan and India. Unfortunately, the initial terminological clarity becomes opaque in the following pages, where the terms 'Islamic herbalism', 'Islamic medicine', 'Arabic-Islamic medicine', 'Unani medicine', and even 'Muslim medicine' are used indistinctly and ahistorically. The terminological profusion increases when the historical 'Arabic-Islamic medicine' is also referred to as 'Galenic', 'Greco-Arabic', 'Greek' and possibly also 'mainstream allopathic medicine' without making the reader aware of the fact that the terms signify the same medical tradition. Within this terminological confusion, Ibn Sina is included on page 5 in the list of authorities on 'Islamic herbalism' whereas on page 3 he is introduced as representative on Galenic medicine, though here with the name Avicenna.

About two thirds of the introduction discusses various issues related to medicine and herbalism, both historical and contemporary ranging from ancient Assyria, Egypt, and China to contemporary India, Pakistan, Europe, and USA. The broad discussion contains interesting elements but it is unfortunately marred by sweeping generalizations, such as 'Islam opposes the myopic vision of modern medicine' (7) and '[t]he Islamic approach to health care is holistic in nature' (7). In addition, the author displays an eagerness to view historical practices as identical with modern methods, e.g. on page 12, where the author states that Ibn Sina 'introduced clinical trials, randomized controlled trials, and efficacy tests in his Canon in the 9^th century'. Ibn Sina did indeed reflect on the methods of testing drugs but his ideas did not constitute an equivalent of what is understood by the modern concept of randomized controlled trials.

The last part of the introduction presents the sources used in the subsequent presentation of the selected herbs. The references to the various herbs are collected from both Sunni and Shi'a sources. The Sunni sources consist of the six recognized hadith collections and of various books titled al-Tibb al-Nabawi. The Shi'a sources consist of Bihar al-Anwar, a general collection of akhbar, and specific texts dealing with al-Tibb al-Nabawi and Tibb al-A'immah. According to the author, the sayings selected for quotation are 'primarily authentic [sahih] or reliable [hasan]' (18). In addition, the author has also included sayings that 'may be weak, and some [even] spurious' (18). Because weak and spurious hadiths are often quoted in the books on al-Tibb al-Nabawi that form the bulk of sources used by the author, these hadiths have indeed 'contributed to the creation of Islamic herbalism' as is correctly stated by the author (18) and thus form a part of the herbal tradition. However, as the status of a hadith is dependent on its reliability it...