Islam, Medicine, and Practitioners in Northern Nigeria

Many ethnographers and anthropologists have written about traditional medicine in Africa as if it were one coherent system. This volume argues that though the Islamic and the pre-Islamic Hausa medical systems have by now many things in common, their theoretical and conceptual frameworks are different. They operate from different understandings of the causes of disease and misfortune, and the appropriate methods to be employed to restore health or alleviate suffering. It also discusses another significant difference between the Islamic and non-Islamic Hausa medical systems: the mode of preserving and communicating medical knowledge. For a thorough understanding of the interaction between these two medical traditions in Hausaland, the early history of Islamic medicine is described, and its theories, concepts, and developments through the centuries are explored.