Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

The Biological Sciences
While astronomy, mathematics, medicine and physica sciences were the forte of Muslim scientists, they were also ver> productive in life sciences. ”Biological Science” is a modern term. II designates those highly structured disciplines that focus on the study of living organisms and conveniently distinguishes them both from the physical sciences, which deal with inanimate matter, and from the arts and humanities. In a sense, therefore, it is misleading to apply this term to the medieval Islamic world, which was not
Hassan Abbas. Islamic Culture, P.60

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Political and Cultural History of Islam

characterized by the formal specialization of the present day. The ”life scientists” of the time were not simply zoologists or entomologists, pediatricians or veterinarians. The physician, for example, might also be a mathematician, a poet, an astronomer, a musician, a linguist, a chemist, a philosopher, or a theologian, even in the practice of medicine he might be an oculist and a surgeon but also a hospital administrator, a psychologist, and designer of medical equipment. Moreover he might apply his knowledge of music, astrology, alchemy, or mathematics in an effort to increase his ability to choose and impound his cures. The great scientists of the period in the East were masters of many disciplines and typified ”the Renaissance man” in the Occident.
in retrospect, however, we recognize that a process of academic and occupational differentiation was going on in medieval Islam in all fields of human endeavour, including the sciences. The Islamic Empire raised the sciences to a level of formal sophistication never achieved before provided a foundation on which the modern sciences have grown.
The full flowering of the arts and sciences, and of medical science and natural history in particular, during the period of the Islamic empire is at least partially explained by the revertial and acquisitive attitudes characteristic of the Arab people from earliest days. In a monumental work on the classification of nation, Tabaqat al-Umam, the Toledan judge and historian al-Qasim Sa’id alAndalusi, describes the cultural attitudes that prevailed in Arabia before and shortly after the birth of Islam. The Arabs prided themselves on advancing their philological skill and on perfecting lexicology and etymology.
As rulers of a vast territory, encompassing many cultures, the Arabs were able to draw on diverse sources to advance their knowledge and practice of the healing arts. They utilized indigenous folk medicine as well as written treatises from the Syriac, Persian, Sanskrit, and Greek legacies, the latter being the most important. Examples of the cross-cultural interchanges that took place between the Arabs - and their subject peoples are numerous. The Arab physician Isa (Masih) bin Hakam of Damascus, in compiling his medical dissertation al-Haruniyah (named after Caliph Harun alRashid, who died in 809, relied on Greek sources. A junior contemporary, Ali bin Sahl Rabban at-Tabari. devoted a large section of his ”Paradise of Wisdom” (completed in 850) to a description of
Scientific and Literary Progress under the Abbasids 59
Indian medicine, which he had extracted from Sanskrit sources. Th physicians of the Bakhtishu’ and Masawayh families, who served th caliphs for over a century, contributed to the maturing of Arabi medicine by consulting Syriac treatises and writing books on Syriai medicine.