The Physician (2013)
The mention of names like Bukhara, Isfahan, Rey and Samarkand may not mean much to an average Joe in the 21st century except for its turmoil and uncertainty. Less a millennium ago, however, these places were beaming with a hive of intellectual activities while the rest of its
neighbours were frozen in the dark ages. These places had some of the greatest minds which engaged in the fields of sciences, medicine, philosophy, astronomy, theology, geography and much more. The zest to understand the secrets of the universe was so deeply entrenched. Even though many scholars from this region left their mark in the history of mankind, Avicenna @ Ibn Sina remains the leading figures who
is said to have mastered all the knowledge that need to be known. He allegedly had
memorised the Quran by the age of 10 and had been certified a physician by 16! His father had a tough time trying to find a suitable tutor because he soon out learned his masters before long.
Being a devout Muslim, he used to visit the mosque for his daily evening prayers. Complementing his daytime job of a healer in his hospital, he would write his treatises late into the night with the accompaniment of wine for inspiration. This and his undying desire to learn and question the known and unknown earned him the accusation of being a non-believer and a polytheist.
This 2013 film depicts a fictitious character, an orphan from England, Rob Cole, who travels all the way to Isfahan to learn from the master of Medicine at that time, Avicenna. Rob, who lost his mother to a disease called ‘side sickness,’ - appendicitis joined a travelling medicine man to learn his trade. Yearning to learn more, he travels to the East, masquerading as a Jew to avoid persecution. He was brought up a Christian. Travelling through the deserts, he falls for a girl who was going to be married off to a holy man.
He managed to get himself
enroled in Avicenna’s academy. He even manages to teach the great master a thing or two about anatomy. Dissection and autopsy on the death are considered sacrilegious and the doctors in Isfahan were
treating without the knowledge of anatomy. This, of course, is bending of the truth by the storytellers. We all know that Avicenna’s anatomy books were used later in Parisian universities.
The makers of this movie have managed to garner the wrath of Persians for distorting historical facts. In the film, this Rob fellow teaches Avicenna how to perform an appendectomy when the ruler (wrongly referred to as the Shah when the leader during Avicenna’s time was Emir). The Seljuks depicted here were actually from a different time frame. At the end of the show, it appears as if Avicenna decided to stay back in his burning library with his book to probably end his life but history tells a different story.
Despite these few shortcomings that geeks and sticklers to history are aware of, it manages to recreate and pass the message that the human
civilisation had not changed much over the centuries. There will always be a group of people who would put aside their differences, like the Jews and the liberal Muslims, to explore and expand knowledge for the betterment of the human race. On the other hand, there would always be people who act as spoilsport to undermine whatever seeming beneficial
endeavours that the others engaged. Like the Seljuks and even the Mamluks, they came, they saw, they destroyed institutions of knowledge, burned libraries
etcetera.
Some conquerors, however, redeveloped their conquered lands afterwards. The Samarkand observatory which was destroyed by Tamerlane was, in turn, was taken by his grandson, Ulugh Beg, to dizzying heights. Ulugh is said to have made complicated astronomical calculations way before Copernicus and more accurate too. The Moguls in India are said to have burnt the largest library in the world, in Bihar, which allegedly raged for one whole month. When the flame settled, they instead reignited and embarked on a journey of academic, philosophical, theological, literary, artistic and cultural rediscovery.
