Arab epidemiology and quarantine ... Did the Europeans transfer patients' isolation system from Arab cities?

Old epidemics that claimed the lives of the world's population were common in ancient times in the societies of India, China, Egypt, Greece, etc., but they were transferred to new societies in Africa and the Americas due to the movement of trade and immigration, the forced transfer of slaves, and the military conquest.

In his introduction to the book "Epidemics and History ... Sickness, Power and Imperialism" by American historian and academic Sheldon Watts, translator and academic Ahmed Abdel-Gawad believes that the plague in ancient and medieval times attacked India, Egypt and China as it attacked Europe, Britain and America alike, but what differed was the pattern of response Between societies.

Abdel-Gawad, a professor of veterinary medicine at Cairo University, continues to say that modern European societies have developed systems and institutions to deal with "microorganisms" and epidemics, unlike other societies. After the first plague disaster in Europe in 1347 and during a century of a pandemic, preventive measures were applied to limit the spread The plague, and by 1450 the northern Italian cities applied quarantine with its five measures that included determining the transmission of people and burying the dead by plague in special pits and covering them with live lime and disposal of their belongings, isolating patients in infectious diseases clinics, imposing taxes for the benefit of the public health sector, and providing equipment For those affected due to the NH epidemic.

And why does Abdul-Jawad ask an important question, why have quarantine measures been applied in the Italian north since the middle of the fifteenth century, and other European countries followed, even though the discovery of pathogenic microbes came more than four centuries later by pioneering German doctor and bacteriologist Robert Koch?

Infection in Arab and European medicine
Despite the knowledge of the Islamic world about quarantine measures against the plague, the study of Arab medicine for the general theory of infection, and how infectious diseases are transmitted from one person to another, the book "Epidemics and History" of the American historian Watts did not discuss the emergence of quarantine sanatoriums in the Islamic world such as those established by Europeans, and a chapter In it the author is entitled "The invention of disease resistance"; and the Arab physician Abu Bakr Al-Razi (died 925) explained in his book "Al-Hawi" the detail of leprosy and its methods of infection.

Before the application of the quarantine in Genoa, Venice and southern European cities, Damascus knew the application of sanitary isolation, and the sixth Umayyad caliph al-Walid bin Abdul Malik - who ruled between 705 and 715 CE - built the first hospital "Bimaristan" in Damascus and issued an order to isolate the leprosy and avoid contact with the rest of the patients. in the hospital. The caliph paid salaries to the sick, including the lepers, provided aid and free treatment, and selected the best doctors and therapists to serve the sick.

The practice of mandatory leprosy in public hospitals in the Islamic world continued for centuries, and in 1431 the Ottomans built a leprosy hospital in Edirne, which was an Ottoman capital before the conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul).

Abdel-Gawad says in the introduction to the WhatsApp book that the reason for the "invention of disease resistance" and the emergence of the quarantine system is not due to the migration of scholars from Constantinople after Muhammad al-Fateh entered it to Italian cities and the emergence of a biological intellectual movement, as the American author says, especially since the stone in Italian cities began Before the conquest of Constantinople, which was not known in its last Byzantine time as one of the centers of science and medicine compared to Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Cordoba and other metropolitan areas of the Islamic world.

Paths of Arab medicine migration to Europe
On the other hand, Abdel-Gawad analyzes the ways of transferring Arab medical sciences and culture to Europe through three main crossings, which is the island of Sicily, in which an Arab scientific center appeared, which continued even after its fall to the hands of the kings of the Normans at the end of the eleventh century AD.

Besides the Mediterranean island near the Italian coast, the Arab conquest of Andalusia represented a major scientific and medical renaissance in the Iberian peninsula in which Cordoba, Granada, Seville, Toledo and others were known as centers of science for eight centuries, and communication with the Arab Mashreq and its prosperous metropolis during the time of the Crusades provided an opportunity for Europeans to get to know Arab science and culture and the transfer of its knowledge from its centers.

Abdel-Gawad asserts that the quarantine procedures did not suddenly appear in the Italian cities as an invention without introductions, in return Arab medicine defined the general theory of infection and quarantine procedures and how to deal with infectious diseases, which was transmitted through the three previously mentioned methods to European cities.

In this context, Abdel-Gawad mentions the effect of translating the books of Al-Razi and Ibn Sina (the author of the book of law in medicine that dealt with fever in detail, and he died in 1037 AD) on the European medical renaissance. Al-Razi devoted a book to infectious diseases such as scabies, tuberculosis and leprosy, and he had a separate book on “measles and smallpox.” "It was printed until the nineteenth century, and in his hospital that he founded on the principles of experience, Al-Razi divided his patients into two groups to avoid the spread of the disease, and this enabled the establishment of quarantine, which the West embraced with passion," said Abdul-Jawad.

The cities of Andalusia included many doctors, including Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (died 1013 CE) and Marwan bin Zahr (died 1160 CE). Next to them was Ibn al-Khatib (died in 1379 AD) a historian, physician and statesman born in Granada and died in Fez al-Maghribia. Ibn al-Khatib mentioned in an innovative message how The infection is transmitted between neighboring homes, between relatives and visitors, and by ship to coastal cities.

Ibn al-Khatib left - according to the introduction to the Book of Epidemiology and History - an accurate description of the great plague that spread in 1348 in Europe, and detailed the ways of transmitting the infection, saying, "If it was said, how do we accept the claim of infection, and the Shariah has been rejected in denial of this? We said: The presence of infection, experience, induction, sense and witness has been proven. And the news provided, these are the proof materials, then it is not hidden from the one who considered this matter that whoever deals with the person with this disease perishes and delivers those who do not mix it, as well as the disease falls in the house or the locality of a garment or utensils so the earring damages the clot of his ear and annihilates the whole house From home, the disease is transmitted to the immediate, then to their neighbors, relatives and visitors M can accommodate up to rags, and the cities of the coasts do not also recognizes that the disease came to her across the sea by expatriates from the city popularized the news about the epidemic. "