Original air date: 10 July 2015 | From Baghdad to Cairo to Edirne, hospitals were major and integral components of medieval and early modern Islamic cities. But what role did they play in these cities and their societies? Were they sites for the development of medical knowledge? In this podcast, Professor Ahmed Ragab examines the history and significance of hospitals in Mamluk Egypt and Syria. He argues that we must view these medieval hospitals as charitable institutions that provided needed services and drugs to the urban poor, rather than the early progenitors of our modern medical institutions. Over the course of the interview we explore how these hospitals functioned as charitable institutions, what type of medical theories and treatments they employed, why medieval rulers regarded them as so important, and why their importance decreased after the sixteenth century.

Ahmed Ragab is Richard T. Watson Assistant Professor of Science and Religion at Harvard Divinity School. His book, The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, and Charity is available from Cambridge University Press as of September 2015.