THE TRANSMISSION OF CONTRACEPTIVE KNOWLEDGE FROM GREECE AND ROME TO THE ...

86 Pages·2016·0.8 MB·English

THE TRANSMISSION OF CONTRACEPTIVE KNOWLEDGE FROM GREECE AND
ROME TO THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND BACK AGAIN

A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
San Diego State University

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
History

By Suzanne Christine Genshock
Summer 2016

iii
Copyright © 2016
by
Suzanne Christine Genshock
All Rights Reserved
iv

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
The Transmission of Contraceptive Knowledge from Greece and
Rome to the Islamic World and Back Again
by
Suzanne Christine Genshock
Masters of Arts in History
San Diego State University, 2016

Greek theories and practical knowledge surrounding contraceptives and abortifacients
were passed along from the Greeks and Romans to later civilizations. This information was
transferred to the Islamic world with the translation movement during the Abbasid Caliphate
in the eighth and ninth centuries. The subsequent incorporation of that knowledge within
Islamic medicine and culture was then transferred back to Europe in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Firstly, this analysis delves into the Greco-Roman, Islamic World’s, and
Medieval Europe’s understanding of contraception, and the role of contraception and
abortion in these societies. Secondly, it looks at the continuities and discontinuities in the
Greco-Roman tradition as the contraceptive knowledge moved between various cultures and
over time. The focus will be on key Greco-Roman texts that had a significant influence on
Islamic and later European medical knowledge, as well, as the works produced as a result of
the transmission of information.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. iv
LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................... vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... vii
CHAPTER
1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1
2 CONTRACEPTIVE KNOWLEDGE IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD
CA. 500 BCE-70 CE………………………………………………………………….7
Socio-Religious Background for Women and Contraceptives…………….….7
Medical Foundations…………………………………………………………10
Contraceptives and Abortifacients…………………………………………...15
3 CONTRACEPTIVE KNOWLEDGE IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD
CA. 800-1200 CE…………………………………………………………………....21
The Transmission of Knowledge…………………………………………….21
Socio-Religious Background for Women and Contraceptives………………25
Medical Foundations………………………………………………………..28
Contraceptives and Abortifacients…………………………………………...31
4 CONTRACEPTIVE KNOWLEDGE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
CA. 1000-1400 CE…………………………………………………………………..37
The Transmission of Knowledge…………………………………………….37
Socio-Religious Background for Women and Contraceptives………………41
Medical Foundations………………………………………………………..44
Contraceptives and Abortifacients…………………………………………...48
5 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………53
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............................................................................................................72
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LIST OF TABLES
PAGE
Table 1.Contraceptivs in the Greco-Roman World………………………………….55
Table 2.1. Contraceptives in the Islamic World……………………………………..63
Table 2.2. More Contraceptives in the Islamic World………………………………68
Table 3. Contraceptives in Medieval Europe………………………………………..69
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my family and members of my thesis committee for all your support
and patience. This wouldn’t have been possible without you.
1

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
There is hardly a more controversial topic today than contraceptives and abortion.
While it has been over 40 years since Roe v Wade legalized abortion in the United States,
according to the Guttmacher Institute, “ [t]wenty-two states enacted 70 abortion restrictions
during 2013. This makes 2013 second only to 2011 in the number of new abortion
restrictions enacted in a single year. To put recent trends in even sharper relief, 205 abortion
restrictions were enacted over the past three years (2011–2013), but just 189 were enacted
during the entire previous decade (2001–2010)”.1 In 2013 both Arkansas and North Dakota
passed measures to ban abortion. North Dakota banned abortion at 6 weeks and Arkansas at
12 weeks. 2014 also saw a fetal personhood law proposed, which afforded full rights to a
“human being at any stage of development” in North Dakota. 2 Not only would this measure
have outlawed abortion, but several types of birth control and other reproductive services as
well.
Given America’s current fevered obsession with women’s bodies and reproductive
rights, most people tend to think of abortion as solely a contemporary conversation focused
on modern forms of birth control and the debate over when a human life begins. However,
knowledge of contraceptives and their use goes back thousands of years and encompasses
multiple civilizations. Documented evidence, in the form of the Ebers scrolls dating to
between 1550 and 1500 BCE, detail medical advice from ancient Egypt on how to stop a
pregnancy.3 Not only did this knowledge exist in the ancient world, but it was disseminated
between various cultures at different times. This thesis will describe the transmission of the
Greco-Roman knowledge of contraceptives and abortifacients into the Islamic world, the

1 Nash, E.“Laws Affecting Reproductive Health and Rights: 2013 State Policy Review.”
https://www.guttmacher.org/laws-affecting-reproductive-health-and-rights-2013-state-policy-review (accessed
August 4, 2015)
2National Women’s Law Center. “2013 State Level Abortion Restrictions”
http://www.nwlc.org/resource/2013-state-level-abortion-restrictions-extreme-overreach-women%E2%80%99s-
reproductive-health-care (Accessed August 4, 2015).
3 Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, 35.
2

continuities in this knowledge as it merged into Islamic culture, and then evaluate the final
fused Greco-Arabic material after it is transmitted to early medieval Europe.
Covering contraceptive knowledge is a vast topic that encompasses several thousands
of years, multiple continents, and various cultures; therefore, terms and boundaries need be
clarified straightaway. The Greco-Roman world encompassed both the Greek and Roman
Empires that dominated the area surrounding the Mediterranean Ocean and Black Sea from
roughly 500 BCE to 600 CE. Crucial evidence will be the primary sources from roughly the
5th BCE to the 7th century CE that address contraceptives in some manner, for example, the
writings of Hippocrates of Cos II (ca. 460 B.C.E. – ca. 370 B.C.E.), Dioscorides (ca. 40—90
C.E.), and Soranus (1st/2nd century C.E.). This first portion of the study ends with the
beginning of the decline of Greco-Roman medical knowledge around the seventh century
CE. While the Greeks and Romans were separate political entities, they will be treated as a
single connected entity for the purposes of this thesis. After conquering the Greeks, the
Romans adopted the foundations of Greek medicine, the Greek corpus of medical literature,
and Rome’s most accomplished and famous physicians were ethnic Greeks who came out of
the schools established under Greek rule. It was this combined tradition of Greek and Roman
medical texts that were later transmitted to the Islamic world. Chapter 1 will focus on this
tradition.
The next geographic area to be considered coincides with the peak of the Abbasid
Caliphate, spanning from the western tip of Spain and North Africa to central Asia and India
to the east. Major centers were in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Persia. The Abbasid Period will be
especially important because of their efforts to translate and incorporate Greco-Roman
medical knowledge with their own scientific advances. Authors of the Islamic world that will
be critical to this analysis include: Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809–873); Al-Razis (865 – 925); and
Ibn Sina, (980 –1037). It is important to note that “Islamic world” or “Islamic medicine” are
vague and problematic terms generally ascribed by modern western historians.4 Not all of the
authors previously mentioned were Muslims or Arabs. However, they resided in lands ruled
by Islamic Caliphs and Sultans, and predominantly wrote in Arabic, which was the academic
language of the region and are consistently combined into the same knowledge tradition.

4Ebrahimnejad, Hormoz, “What is ‘Islamic’ in Islamic Medicine? An Overview,” 259-260.
3

Lastly we will follow the translation movement of Arabic medical texts into Europe
in the Early Middle Ages from roughly 1000-1400CE. Geographically this area encompassed
much of the Mediterranean basin and parts of northern Europe. Major authors for this period
will include Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), Trota (11th or 12th century), and Peter of
Spain (13th century).
Yet another problematic topic to be addressed is the use of “magical” cures used by
all three of these cultures. The problem is in the definition of magic itself, which is in its own
right a hotly contested subject. Too specific a definition and one has excluded items
commonly accepted as magic, and too broad a definition can become almost meaningless in
its vagueness. Taking a very general view of the definition of magic is Derek Collins. In
Magic in the Ancient Greek World (2008) he posits that the debate over the modern
definition of magic is irrelevant. Instead the focus should be on the “particular historically
attested practices [. It] is a more productive way to explore ancient behavior, and doing so
often draws into question what to earlier generations of scholars had seemed clearly to be, for
instance, either magic or religion.”5 He is a proponent of the use of anthropological methods
like sympathy, analogy, agency, causality, and participation, because the written record is
insufficient in most cases. One especially frustrating issue over what constitutes magic is the
question of where the boundaries of religion and science in ancient cultures are, and from
whose perspective are we judging the difference. Sara Iles Johnston posits:
Will “magic” one day be relatively easy to define, as, say, “sacrifice” or “divination”
are? I doubt it; as I noted earlier, one thing that all scholars of ancient magic agree on
is that “magic” and its synonyms were born out of a desire to condemn the practices
of other people and have continued to be used that way throughout Western history6

Looking at the role that magic plays in the ancient medical knowledge of contraceptives and
the transmission of it, a broad approach to what constitutes magic will be taken here. Magic
will be one of several delivery methods discussed. They may not have necessarily been
considered magical by the physicians who prescribed them, because in some cases it is
unclear how the ancient author would have classified the various methods they describe.
Therefore, anything that relies on transferring the properties of an item to a human being
without a direct route into the body, including amulets, will be considered a use of

5 Collins, Magic in the Ancient Greek World, xii.
6 Johnston, “Describing the Undefinable: New Books on Magic and Old Problems of Definition,” 54.