A medieval Arabic chronicle; bad medicine

Or, how not to fix a leg wound, Crusader medicine ca 1150.

Lanquan li jorn, by Jaufré Rudel, ca 1150, which I love for the clear influence of Arabic music on the melody.

So, I was reading Ambroise’s contemporary history of the Siege of Acre, and I stumbled on a phrase about cowards, and it reminded me of a funny phrase from Richard of Devizes, that I mentioned in our very first substantive post, wherein Devizes wrote “Let two thousand bold knights…be made ready”, and I noted that the original would literally be translated as “men who have not their hearts in their boots.”

I was googling that phrase looking for more detail, and (essentially unrelated) I saw an article by the historian Dan Jones, whom I have read a lot of, entitled “What the Far Right Gets Wrong about the Crusades.” Of course I had to read it. And I was rewarded. Amongst many other good points, he mentions how the relationship between Muslims and Crusaders was not always violent, and was often even collaborative, a point we have made here elsewhere as well.

A staple of modern crusader memes is the image of a Templar knight preparing to make righteous war on non-Christian unbelievers. Yet the great Syrian soldier-poet Usama ibn Munqidh (d.1188) wrote of the Templars in warm and friendly terms, recounting that when he visited crusader Jerusalem the Templars in their global headquarters would clear out one of their chapels to allow him to pray towards Mecca.

Hm, a medieval Arabic chronicle. I bet that’s good fun. I dug up a 1929 translation of the chronicle on the Internet Archive. And yes, it is good fun, full of all kinds of strange anecdotes and dark humor. Following on our last post about medieval PTSD, here’s a quick sample of medieval medicine as seen by the Muslims, from the chapter entitled An Appreciation Of The Frankish Character.

A case illustrating their curious medicine is the following: The lord of al-Munaytirah wrote to my uncle asking him to dispatch a physician to treat certain sick persons among his people. My uncle sent him a Christian physician named Thābit. Thābit was absent but ten days when he returned. So we said to him, "How quickly hast thou healed thy patients!" He said: ‘They brought before me a knight in whose leg an abscess had grown; and a woman afflicted with imbecility.’ To the knight I applied a small poultice until the abscess opened and became well; and the woman I put on diet and made her humor wet. Then a Frankish physician came to them and said, “This man knows nothing about treating them.” He then said to the knight, “Which wouldst thou prefer, living with one leg or dying with two?” The latter replied, “Living with one leg.” The physician said, “Bring me a strong knight and a sharp ax.” A knight came with the ax. And I was standing by. Then the physician laid the leg of the patient on a block of wood and bade the knight strike his leg with the ax and chop it off at one blow. Accordingly he struck it - while I was looking on - one blow, but the leg was not severed. He dealt another blow, upon which the marrow of the leg flowed out and the patient died on the spot. He then examined the woman and said, “This is a woman in whose head there is a devil which has possessed her. Shave off her hair.” Accordingly they shaved it off and the woman began once more to eat their ordinary diet - garlic and mustard. Her imbecility took a turn for the worse. The physician then said, “The devil has penetrated through her head.” He therefore took a razor, made a deep cruciform incision on it, peeled off the skin at the middle of the incision until the bone of the skull was exposed and rubbed it with salt. The woman also expired instantly. Thereupon I asked them whether my services were needed any longer, and when they replied in the negative I returned home, having learned of their medicine what I knew not before.

The chronicle is also available in a modern translation by Cobb, here

It's not all bad news though, sometimes they get it right!

I have, however, witnessed a case of their medicine which was quite different from that. The king of the Franks had for treasurer a knight named Bernard, who (may Allah's curse be upon him!) was one of the most accursed and wicked among the Franks. A horse kicked him in the leg, which was subsequently infected and which opened in fourteen different places. Every time one of these cuts would close in one place, another would open in another place. All this happened while I was praying for his perdition. Then came to him a Frankish physician and removed from the leg all the ointments which were on it and began to wash it with very strong vinegar. By this treatment all the cuts were healed and the man became well again. He was up again like a devil.

I will leave unquoted here Usama’s story of a Muslim, a Christian knight, and his lady all having their nether regions shaved together at a bath house (seriously), it is quite droll, and is used in a section remarking on the lack of sexual jealousy of the Crusaders (or Franks, as Usama refers to them).

Probably not how we would describe them today. The past is another country, they do things differently there.