Google doodles Mohammad ibn Zakariya Razi for Arabic speaking states to celebrate his birthday anniversary!
Even in historic and academic texts and articles, there is a strange tendency to mark many Persian scholars as Arabs, since they have written their books in Arabic! It seems even some academicians do not or do not want to recognize that many scholars – among them Persians – for some five centuries, wrote the majority of their works in the field of theology, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, philology, mathematics and even history, in Arabic. The reason is simple. Until the downfall of the caliphate in 1258, the Iranian world was part of the Islamic empire, and Arabic was the ‘lingua franca’ of that empire from Spain and Morocco to South-East Asia.
In a number of important ways, Iran is the ‘odd man out’ in the Middle East. First, it was an imperial power in ancient times. The first Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great, found it in 550 B.C.
Second, Iran differs ethnically its immediate neighbors. The Iranians are not semantic, nor do they belong to the family of Turkic peoples. They are, as the name of their country indicates, of Aryan origin.
Third, Iranians speak a language, which is different from that of most of their immediate neighbors. Indeed, the term ‘Aryan’ is used more often these days to denote a language family than a family of peoples. Modern Persian and its cognate Iranian languages and dialects, together with the Indian languages like Hindi and Bengali, which stem from Sanskrit, derive from a common Indo-Iranian parent language. By contrast, the other principal languages spoken in the Middle East, Arabic and Turkish, belong to quite different language families.
After the advent of Islam, Arabic replaced Pahlavi, the Middle Persian language used by Persians during the Sasanid period.
Muhammad-e Zakariya-ye Razi (Persian: محمد زکریای رازی), known as Rhazes or Rasis after medieval Latinists (August 26, 865 – 925), was a Persian polymath, a prominent figure in Islamic Golden Age, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher, and scholar.
Numerous “firsts” in medical research, clinical care, and chemistry are attributed to him, including being the first to differentiate smallpox from measles, and the discovery of numerous compounds and chemicals including kerosene, among others. Edward Granville Browne considers him as “probably the greatest and most original of all the physicians, and one of the most prolific as an author”.
Razi made fundamental and enduring contributions to the fields of medicine, alchemy, music, and philosophy, recorded in over 200 books and articles in various fields of science. He was well-versed in Ancient Persian, Greek and Ancient Indian medical knowledge and made numerous advances in medicine through own observations and
discoveries.
Educated in music, mathematics, philosophy, and metaphysics, he chose medicine as his professional field. As a physician, he was an early proponent of experimental medicine and has been described as the father of pediatrics. He was also a pioneer of ophthalmology. He was among the first to use Humoralism to distinguish one contagious disease from another. In particular, Razi was the first physician to distinguish smallpox and measles through his clinical characterization of the two diseases. He became chief physician of Rey and Baghdad hospitals.
As an alchemist, Razi is known for his study of sulfuric acid.
He traveled extensively, mostly in Persia. As a teacher in medicine, he attracted students of all disciplines and was said to be
compassionate and devoted to the service of his patients, whether rich or poor.
Resources: Wikipedia, Google
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Tags: : Razi, Alchemist, Doodle, google, Iran, iranian, persia, persian
