Critique of the Method of Understanding Medical Hadiths in the Book of “Derasah fi Tib al-Rasoul al-Mustafa”

Considering the abundance of medical narrations in Islamic tradition on the one side and daily increase in their scientific and practical use in medicine on the other, the way these narrations are interpreted and implied is a crucial issue to discuss. Interpreting and understanding these medical narrations requires some standards independent from those used in the domain of jurisprudence. Among the important medical books derived from these narrations is “Derasah fi Tib al-Rasoul al-Mustafa” the author of which has used the Ijtihad Method to train medical students and treat patients. Thus, considering the real effect of this ijtihad method on patients’ lives, the purpose of this study is to investigate the validity of this method in the field of medical narrations.

The current research was conducted utilizing a descriptive-analytic method and relied upon the aforesaid book and books from the field of jurisprudence and the principles of jurisprudence to evaluate and criticize the method employed in the book discussed. The authors reported no conflict of interests.

It was found that the criticisms targeted at the methodology of Ijtihad from medical narrations used by the book involve, 1) neglecting the general standards of understanding and interpreting the narrations which entail; heavy dependence on the texts without considering the associated evidences, neglecting rebuilding broken up narrations, deficient lexical and topical investigation, speculative generalizations and specializations, extending the meaning of narrations to material issues, 2) neglecting the exclusive standards for interpretation of medical narrations including; neglecting the distinction among a real (fulfilled) case, a potential (assumed) case and particular (conditional) case.

Studying the examples from method and style of the book in interpreting medical narrations with regard to recognition and treatment of illnesses showed that the inferences made by the book are not reliable due to their inattention to primary standards and general knowledge of narrations’ jurisprudence. Thus, without ensuring the validity and accuracy of the authors’ interpretations, the method is not reliable because it exerts real effects on human lives.