The 2nd International Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin Symposium on History of Science in Islam Proceedings Book
The Manuscript of al-Balḫī’s Masạ̄liḥ (al-abdān) wa-l-anfus According to Fuat Sezgin and Its Present Evaluation
Zahide Özkan RashedFuat Sezgin (1924–2018) had already made Abu Zaid al-Balḫī’s manuscript Maṣāliḥ al-abdān wa-l-anfus available in 1984, when one of its two copies, which are preserved in the Ayasofya Library in Istanbul (Ayasofya No. 3741), was reproduced in the facsimile series of the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Sciences in Frankfurt/Main. In his Introduction, Sezgin leaves it to specialists in the field to have his high estimation of the work verified. Since then, very interesting research has been finalized, especially by professionals who deal with the material discussed in the manuscript. Özkan (1990; 2019) has already made clear in her dissertation in 1990 that al-Balḫī has exceeded the level of his contemporaries and of his early predecessors or successors in many respects. Surveying the prevailing opinions and practices, he criticizes the inadequate treatment of disorders by neglecting either the soul as a physician or the body as a philosopher, in this way disregarding the bond between these equally important parts of a human being. He opposes this fundamental error with a new, complex system which exhibits characteristics of today’s psychosomatic medicine. Further examinations from the angle of practicing specialists on psychological health, e.g. psychologists and psychiatrists, detected parallels in al-Balḫī’s treatise which reach into the present. They even reveal conceptual structures established in modern diagnostic recording systems, like the DSM-5, as well as therapeutic strategies applied in psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine today.
