Memoirs of Usama ibn Munqidh

Summary

Usama ibn Munqidh dictated these reminiscences, known in Arabic as the Kitab al-I'tibar (the Book of Learning by Example), when he was nearly ninety lunar years old and living in Damascus under Saladin's patronage. The book is not a continuous autobiography but a sequence of anecdotes, grouped loosely by subject and linked by association, meant to teach that the length of each life is fixed by God and that neither daring nor caution can change it. The beginning of the only manuscript is lost, so the text opens in the middle of a battle of Zanki against the Franks. Section I recounts Usama's wars and travels: his first stay in Damascus with the atabeg Mu'in al-Din Unur, whom he accompanied on embassies to King Fulk of Jerusalem; his decade at the Fatimid court in Cairo amid mutinies, assassinations and the murder of the caliph al-Zafir in 1154; his flight to Syria, during which Franks plundered the ship carrying his family's goods and his library of four thousand volumes; and many skirmishes around Shayzar against Franks, Isma'ilis and Arab raiders. A chapter on lions and other beasts follows, then the famous chapter on the Franks. There Usama tells of a Frankish knight who called him brother and offered to take his son to Europe; of the Christian physician Thabit, sent to treat Frankish patients, who saw a Frankish practitioner amputate a knight's leg with an axe and cut a cross into a woman's scalp, both patients dying; and, just after, of Frankish physicians who healed a leg wound with vinegar and a Frank who gave an effective remedy for scrofula, which Usama himself later used. He describes Templars in Jerusalem who cleared a chapel so he could pray, a newly arrived Frank who forcibly turned him to the east, judicial duels and ordeal by water, and the better manners of Franks long settled in Syria. Section I closes with reflections on old age, the unlikely survivals and deaths that prove life's term is fixed, and a eulogy of Saladin. Section II gathers stories of holy men and remarkable cures, including those of the Christian physician ibn-Butlan of Aleppo. Section III is a book of the chase, describing hawking and hunting with his father, Zanki, Nur al-Din and others across Syria, Mesopotamia and Egypt over seventy years. The library text is Philip K. Hitti's 1929 English translation with his introduction, from an OCR scan.

Top Lessons

• The appointed term of life

  Usama's governing lesson is that each life has a length written beforehand, so that a warrior who rushes into danger does not die sooner and a cautious man does not live longer. He tells of men who survived terrible gashes and of others killed by a trifle. The teaching frees him from fear in battle and gives his book its title, learning by example.

• Seeing an enemy as neighbors

  Usama fought Franks all his life and often curses them in the conventional phrases of his time, yet he records a Frankish knight who called him brother, Templars he calls friends, and Franks long settled in Syria whose manners he respects. He also records shocks and disagreements, such as the newcomer who forced him to pray eastward. His chapter is valuable because it shows contact, courtesy and conflict side by side.

• Two kinds of medicine, fairly reported

  The memoir sets Thabit's poultice and diet beside a Frankish practitioner's amputation by axe, and immediately adds a Frankish vinegar cure that healed a festering leg and a Frankish remedy for scrofula that Usama himself later used successfully. In the cures of Section II, ibn-Butlan diagnoses with care, warns his students against dangerous remedies, and, after a jest about his fee, tells a worried father honestly that a boy's skin spots will pass without treatment. Usama's medicine is a medicine of observed cases, told with an eye for both failure and success.

• Losses borne and remembered

  Usama lost his castle home, most of his family in an earthquake, his fortune in Egypt, and four thousand books at sea. He grieves most for the books and says the wound will last until his death. Yet his memoir closes not with complaint but with a prayer that he use his remaining days well. Old age, he writes, is a heritage of forgetting that goes back to Adam, and his book is an act of remembering.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The memoir is one of the most cited medieval sources for medical practice at the meeting point of Islamic and Frankish worlds, and it should be read as anecdote, not as a survey. In Section I, ch. 8, the Christian physician Thabit treats an abscessed leg with a poultice and a woman with a mental disorder (Hitti renders the term as imbecility, noting its uncertainty) by diet to moisten her humors, in the Galenic manner of Arabic medicine; a Frankish practitioner instead amputates the leg with an axe and, judging the woman possessed, shaves and incises her scalp and rubs it with salt, and both patients die. Usama immediately adds two Frankish successes: a festering leg healed by removing ointments and washing it with strong vinegar, and a remedy for scrofula (glasswort ash in oil and vinegar, then burnt lead in ghee) that cured a Shayzar boy and that Usama later used himself. Section II, ch. 2 gathers cures attributed to the Christian physician ibn-Butlan, including a dropsy case, an emetic for a sifter's throat with a warning that the remedy could kill, and his reassurance that a boy's skin spots were not leprosy; other cases involve a carbuncle, a hernia, a chill relieved by melon and diagnosed as biliousness, and colic relieved after a dream. Section I, ch. 9 records men who fainted at the sight of blood or of bloodletting, a man who sawed off his own leg, and survivals from deep wounds, all used to argue that the term of life is fixed. Usama's reflections on his own enfeebled old age, and his loss of family and books, give the book a sustained voice on aging and grief. Retrospective diagnoses of these cases are interpretive readings.

• Section I, ch. 8, 'Their curious medication'

  Thabit's poultice and diet; the Frankish amputation by axe and the scalp incision of a woman judged possessed; both patients die.

• Section I, ch. 8, following cases

  A Frankish physician heals a leg with washings of strong vinegar; a Frank's remedy for scrofula cures a boy, and Usama uses it on others.

• Section I, ch. 9

  A man faints at gushing blood, another at bloodletting; a man saws his own leg; a dropsy case relieved by a wound to the abdomen.

• Section I, ch. 9, reflections on old age

  Usama on the feebleness of extreme old age and his withdrawal from service.

• Section II, ch. 2 (Noteworthy Cures)

  Cures by ibn-Butlan and others: dropsy, a dust-clogged throat, a feared leprosy, a cold in the head, a chill and a colic cured after a dream.