The light of the day · Sunday 4 October
What the surgeons used for pain is less than claimed
It is often said that Muslim surgeons invented general anaesthesia. What the sources attest is narrower and worth knowing accurately. Opium, henbane, mandrake and related drugs were given to dull pain and make a patient drowsy, and recipes exist for a sponge soaked in a decoction, dried, then moistened and held under the nose. Recipes of that kind appear in Latin and in Arabic medical writing in overlapping centuries, and which way they travelled is not settled. There is no evidence of measured dosing, of controlled unconsciousness, or of anything a modern anaesthetist would recognise. The surgical texts assume a patient who feels the operation, work to keep it short, and describe assistants holding him still. General anaesthesia arrived in the 1840s with ether, and it was new then.
Arabic and Latin surgery · 9th to 13th centuries
Sunday 4 October 2026 · 21 Rabi ath-Thani 1448 AH
The word · History
الإِسْرَاءُ وَالمِعْرَاج
Isra and Mi'raj
The night the Prophet was taken to Jerusalem and then raised through the heavens.
Isra is the journey by night to al-Masjid al-Aqsa, where he led the prophets in prayer; mi'raj is the ascent from there. The Qur'an opens Surah al-Isra with the journey and Surah an-Najm describes what he saw at the Lote Tree. It was on this night that the five daily prayers were given, reduced from fifty at Musa's urging. Sunni scholars overwhelmingly hold it was in body and not only in vision, and the exact date…
The Path · chapter 41 of 71
الحديبية
Hudaybiyyah Treaty
1,400 pledged under the tree. A treaty that became a clear victory.
Divine assessment can contradict human appraisal
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