Anatomy of Bones in Medical Writings in Islamic Period:A Comparative Study on Tib al-Malikiby Ahwazi andCanonof Avicenna

While the prohibition on the dissection of the human body in Christian and Islamic culture prevented physicians from knowing the internal organs of the human body, Greek physicians and later, Muslim doctors tried to get acquainted with the shape and function of the organs through the dissection of animals. Galen dissected the pigs, and Yuhanna ibn Masawaih and Rhazes dissected monkeys, and so, this trend continued in Islamic civilization. Muslim physicians such as Rhazes, Ali ibn Abbas and Avicenna have devoted a part of their comprehensive medical books to anatomy. Since the fourteenth century, human dissection was allowed for medical education in some European countries' hospitals and opened the way for teaching and writing books on Anatomy.

In this study, bone anatomy in two major medical encyclopedias in the Islamic civilization, Tib al-Maliki and Canon, have been compared and also the views of Ali ibn Abbas and Ibn Sina on bones are examined to show their contribution to the development of anatomy.

Contrary to what is thought that the prohibition of dissection in Islam has caused Muslim physicians to have little knowledge of dissection, the study of great Muslim physicians' works shows their mastery of dissection and even their disagreement in this regard. Comparing the two valuable works of medicine of the Islamic period, Tib al-Maliki and Canon, show the physicians' efforts to describe the body's bones accurately. Comparing the two works shows that the order and coherence of the contents in Tib al-Malilki work are more than Canon, and also Tib al-Maliki seems to have been compiled for medical education. Although Ibn Raban Tabari in Ferdows al-Hikma and Razi in al-Mansouri have also paid attention to the arrangement of their works, in Tib al-Maliki there is a kind of coherence throughout the book which is praiseworthy.