Medicine and Religion in the Life of an Ottoman Sheikh

<p>In 1768 Aḥmad al-Damanhūrī became the rector (shaykh) of al-Azhar which was one of the most authoritative and respected positions in the Ottoman Empire. He occupied this position until his death. Despite being a prolific author whose writings are largely extant al-Damanhūrī remains almost unknown and much of his work awaits study and analysis. This book aims to shed light on al-Damanhūrī's diverse intellectual background and that of and his contemporaries building on and continuing the scholarship on the academic thought of the late Ottoman Empire.</p><p></p><p>The book specifically investigates the intersection of medical and religious knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Egypt. It takes as its focus a manuscript on anatomy by al-Damanhūrī (d. 1778) entitled <i>The Clear Statement on the Science of Anatomy</i> (<i>al-qawl al-ṣarīḥ fī ʿilm al-tashrīḥ</i>). The book includes an edited translation of <i>The Clear Statement</i> which is a well-known but unstudied and unpublished manuscript. It also provides a summary translation and analysis of al-Damanhūrī's own intellectual autobiography. As such the book provides an important window into a period that remains deeply understudied and a topic that continues to cause debates and controversies.</p><p></p><p>This study therefore will be of keen interest to scholars working on the post-Classical Islamic world as well as historians of religion science and medicine looking beyond Europe in the Early Modern period.</p>