Physicians and Medical Practice in Safavid Iran
In Safavid Iran, physicians combined inherited medical learning with observations of particular patients and knowledge of drugs. These practices belonged to the wider household and work settings of daily life in Safavid Iran. A central framework was humoral medicine: it held that health depended on a balance among blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Each humor was understood as hot or cold, dry or moist, and their mixture shaped a person’s temperament. Regimen, especially food and daily habits, and medicines were ways to respond when that balance seemed disturbed.
A physician’s compendium and case records
Bahā al-Dawla Nurbakhshi completed the Khulasat al-tajarib, or Summary of Experiences, near Rayy, close to modern Tehran, in 1501. The date falls at the beginning of the Safavid period, but the work continued an older Persian medical tradition. Its 28 chapters moved from health-preserving regimen and hygiene to fevers, diseases affecting different parts of the body, poisons and antidotes, compound medicines, and technical terms used in pharmacy.
Nurbakhshi’s entries joined explanations of disease to treatment and cases he had encountered. In a Rayy case account from late winter 1501, he describes children suffering severe coughing, chest pain and weakness; some also developed fever. Nurbakhshi records that, for some children, sweating followed as the fever subsided, and then both cough and fever ceased.
Describing and preparing medicines
In 1669–70, Muhammad Momen Tonokaboni, known as Hakim Momen, completed the Tohfat al-momenin for Shah Solayman, the Safavid ruler. A pharmacopoeia is a reference work that describes medicinal substances and how to prepare them. The book first names and describes drugs, then explains preparations. Its entries note where and in what season plants grew, and include equivalents from Persian, Arabic, Turkic, Indian and other languages. Those names helped readers connect substances in older books to plants and products known in different regions.
Hakim Momen also checked some identifications through direct observation. When discussing a plant whose name had been confused with another, he reported growing its seeds and inspecting the leaves, noting that the result resembled basil.
Drug preparation also connected book learning to shops and consultations. In the seventeenth century, an attār was a seller and preparer of drugs. A physician and druggist could consult about diagnosis and medicine choice. The French traveler Jean Chardin reported that physicians kept medicinal-herb collections to train apprentices. Senna, rhubarb, licorice and myrrh were among drugs used in Iran. An attār might examine a customer and prescribe a remedy; weighing, preparing and supplying substances brought book learning into treatment.
Family training and court service
Qazi Said Qomi was born in 1640 in a family of philosopher-physicians. His father taught him medicine and basic philosophy; his elder brother was already among the court physicians. Around 1658, Qazi Said moved to Isfahan seeking patronage under Shah Abbas II, king of Safavid Iran (r. 1642–1666). Qazi Said and his brother became the ruler’s personal physicians. His early medical and philosophical education preceded court service, while his philosophical writings continued alongside medicine.
Persian medical learning also moved with physicians across political borders. Nizam al-Din Ahmad Gilani left Safavid Iran for the Qutb Shahi court at Golconda in the Deccan, southern India, under Abdullah Qutb Shah (r. 1626–1672). There he wrote short Persian works on medicine, pharmacology and philosophy, including a collection about the properties of foods and drugs. His career, like the Indian sources used in Hakim Momen’s pharmacopoeia, documents the movement of practitioners and texts between Iran and India.