Faculty Profile

Elaine van Dalen is assistant professor of Classical Islamic Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. She is a philologist working on medical, botanical, and agricultural texts from the Classical Islamic world. Her research questions relate to the history of medicine and philology, the transmission and translation of knowledge, and practices of medical commentary. She teaches Columbia’s Contemporary Civilization course, and MESAAS’ core course Asian Humanities.

Her most recent publication “Pediatrics in Medieval Islamic Theoria” (JAOS) analyzes the pediatric material in the Arabic commentaries (written tenth–fifteenth centuries) on the Hippocratic Aphorisms by exploring the traces of its late-antique origins and highlighting the influences of contemporary Islamic sources.

Medical Perspectives on Epidemics in the Classical Islamic World

In the case of an epidemic, stay at home, and clean your house daily, recommends the classical Islamic physician al Rāzī (d.c. 925). Epidemics afflicted the pre-modern Islamic world at regular intervals, and physicians, just as historians and other scholars, engaged with them throughout Islamic history. Classical Islamic physicians theorized about the nature of epidemics and their causes, and attempted to explain why so many people could be afflicted by a disease in a certain place at the same time. They also thought about the prevention of epidemics, and suggested cures. This information can be found in their medical compendia and treatises. After the Black Death in 1348, a new genre of plague treatises developed that specifically focused on the discussion of plagues, including new types of explanation and treatment.