INTRODUCTION TO PROPHETIC MEDICINE

 

Introduction

Praise be to Allah. We thank Him, the Most High, and seek His Help and Forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evils within ourselves and that of bad deeds. He whom Allah guides is truly guided, and whom Allah leaves to stray, none can guide him. We bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His final Prophet (Peace and Blessings be Upon Him). We ask Allah to bless our Prophet Muhammad, his family, his Companions, and all his followers, from the beginning of his call to the Day of Judgment. 

Prophetic Medicine simply refers to the actions done and thought said by the Prophet Muhammed with regards to sickness, treatment, nutrition, and hygiene. It is distinct from Islamic medicine, in that the latter is a broader category encompassing a variety of medical practices rooted in the ancient civilizations of the Muslim nations which influenced Medieval Islamic Medical sciences.
Prophetic medical traditions exhort humans to not simply stop at following Muhammad's teachings but encourage them to search for cures as well. The literature of Prophetic medicine thus occupies a symbolic role in the elucidation of Islamic identity as constituted by a particular set of relationships to science, medicine, technology, and nature. Ibn Abbas has also narrated that Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) said: “There are two blessings which many people lose: (They are) health and free time for doing good.” (Al-Bukhari).
Prophet Muhammed PBUH had a firm belief in the existence of a cause and a cure for every disease and that was described in many prophetic hadiths such as: “Make use of medical treatment, for Allah, has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it, with the exception of one disease, namely old age.” Narrated by: Abu Dawud, Sunan Abu Dawud.

About 50 hadiths on specific ailments and their remedies have been grouped together under the Chapter called Kitab-al-Tibb of well-known collections of hadith by Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, and others.
In addition to those, more than 300 hadiths referred to hygiene, cleanliness, the habit of eating healthy Prophetic pieces of Advice, and drinking. All these prophetic hadiths, which number about 400, constitute the Prophetic Medicine and can be found together in the classical books of Ibn al-Qayyim Aljouzi (8th Century AD), Abu Nu’aim (5th Century AD), Abu Abd-Allah al-Dhahbi (8th Century AD), and Abu Bakar Ibn al-Sani (4th century AD).