Әбу Зәйіт әл-Балхи: Ғалым, географияшы, дәрігер және психолог

Persian polymath (850 934)
the scientist

Abu Zayd Ahmed ibn Sahl Balkhi (ابو زید احمد بن سهل بلخی) was a Persian Muslim polymath: a geographer, mathematician, physician, psychologist and scientist. Born in 850 CE in Shamistiyan, in the province of Balkh, Greater Khorasan, he was a disciple of al Kindi. He also founded the "Balkhī school" of terrestrial mapping in Baghdad. al Balkhi traveled to Iraq. At this time Islamic culture was making strong efforts to absorb the knowledge of previous civilisations, and having its own culltural flowering. This period is sometimes termed the Islamic Golden Age. al Balkhi spent eight years in Iraq. One of his teachers was philosopher Abū Yūsof alKendī. According to Abu Muhammad al Hassan ibn al Waziri, one of his students, al Balkhi's face was covered in scars that he acquired during an episode of smallpox.

Of the many books ascribed to him in the al Fihrist by Ibn al Nadim, one can note The Excellency of Mathematics and his On Certitude in Astrology. His Figures of the Climates (Suwar al aqalim) consisted chiefly of geographical maps. He also wrote the medical and psychological work, Masalih al Abdan wa al Anfus (Sustenance for Body and Soul). A modern scholar describes the bulk of his works as "more than 60 books and manuscripts, meticulously researching disciplines as varied in scope as geography, medicine, theology, politics, philosophy, poetry, literature, Arabic grammar, astrology, astronomy, mathematics, biography, ethics, sociology as well as others."

His Figures of the Regions (Suwar al aqalim) consisted chiefly of geographical maps. It led to him founding the "Balkhī school" of terrestrial mapping in Baghdad. The geographers of this school also wrote extensively of the peoples, products, and customs of areas in the Muslim world, with little interest in the non Muslim realms.

The second part of this manuscript is known as Sustenance for the Soul.

Abu Zayd al Balkhi was the first to differentiate between neurosis and psychosis, and the first to classify neurotic disorders and pioneer cognitive therapy in order to treat each of these classified disorders. He classified neurosis into four emotional disorders: fear and anxiety, anger and aggression, sadness and depression, and obsession. He further classified three types of depression: normal depression or sadness (huzn), endogenous depression originating from within the body, and reactive clinical depression originating from outside the body. He also wrote that a healthy individual should always keep healthy thoughts and feelings in his mind in the case of unexpected emotional outbursts in the same way drugs and First Aid medicine are kept nearby for unexpected physical emergencies. He stated that a balance between the mind and body is required for good health and that an imbalance between the two can cause sickness. Al Balkhi also introduced the concept of reciprocal inhibition (al ilaj bi al did), which was re introduced over a thousand years later by Joseph Wolpe in 1969.

The Muslim physician Abu Zayd al Balkhi was a pioneer of psychotherapy, psychophysiology and psychosomatic medicine. He recognized that the body and the soul can be healthy or sick, or "balanced or imbalanced", and that mental illness can have both psychological and/or physiological causes. He wrote that imbalance of the body can result in fever, headaches and other physical illnesses, while imbalance of the soul can result in anger, anxiety, sadness and other mental symptoms.

al Balkhi quotes a saying that "most of the terror comes from anticipation of the terror" and advocates being informed and realistic about the true nature of a concern.

He advocates 'forcing oneself to repeatedly expose one's hearing and sight to noxious things' and to 'moved again and again near the thing it is scared of until it becomes used to it and loses its fear.

al Balkhi wrote that anxiety and distress were at the core of all harmful emotional symptoms (e. g. anger) and that happiness and joyfulness were the root cause of all positive emotional states (e. g. tranquility, pleasure and delight).

While the topic of sex is more widely discussed today, al Balkhi explored the subject in detail, specifically various sexual attributes and the affects that they have on an individual. A specific talking point that he mentioned in his work was the act of remaining abstinent. By doing so, an individual subjects themself to physical ailments, since the act is deemed by him to be "unnatural". He also recommended a specific diet and to abstain from taking medications that were believed to enhance sexuality as a means to treat sexual impotence.

In a collection of works by the 10th century al Tawhidi, al Balkhi describes politics as an art that aims to contribute to the rise of a country. Furthermore, he mentions five separate sources that play into the overall outcome of politics. These include the tangible cause as corresponding to the subjects' affairs, the official reason as to the overall well being of the people, the driving force as "the ruler’s concern for the affairs of his subjects", the purpose as the preservation of public welfare, as well as the instrumental cause consisting of using "incitement and intimidation" to achieve the goal.