Tuesday
19
DEC

05:15 PM

Medical Anthropology Forum - Wintersemester 2023/2024

Tibb in Pakistan: Theoretical and Practical Endeavours

Prof. Dr. Stefan Reichmuth, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Along with other medical traditions and with biomedicine, Humoral Medicine (tibb, hikmat), nowadays widely known as Yunani tibb/Unani Medicine, continues to enjoy a large amount of popularity and of public recognition in the countries of the Indian subcontinent. The lecture discusses a reformed school of Unani medicine which was founded in Lahore by the Hakim and pharmacist Sabir Multani (d.1972) and which can be seen as a response to the challenges of both Western biomedicine and of medical pluralism in Pakistan. He gained many adherents, and a large number of the Pakistani Hakims are today followers of his theories and therapeutical approaches, which are based on a thorough revision of the basic medical concepts of Graeco-Arabic Humoral Medicine, and its integration with elements drawn from both biomedicine, Ayurveda, and Islamic Mysticism. It will then illustrate the medical practice prevailing within this school with local case studies of Unani practitioners in the Punjab in Northern Pakistan.

Retired Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Senior Fellow at Ruhr University Bochum. His research has focused on the history of Arabic and Islamic culture, education and learning in a transregional perspective, including Arabic, literature and the institutionalization of science in Africa and South Asia. He was chief editor of the journal Die Welt des Islams and conducted a larger DFG research project on Unani Medicine in South Asia and its globalization in the years 2008–2016. He was principal investigator for the German side in a joint ANR/DFG French/German project on “The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Modern Islam” (2017–2022). Recently published: Prophetic Piety. Individual and Collective Manifestations, ed. Nelli Amri, Rachida Chih, and Stefan Reichmuth, Leiden 2023.

Address

4010 (CATS-Seminargebäude)

010.01.05

Voßstr. 2

69115 Heidelberg

Organizer

SAI, Abt. Ethnologie

Contact

Lin Nagels