Postdoc

The main focus of Mujeeb's postdoctoral research was a comparative examination of the history of medieval medicine within early Islam and ancient Japan. In other words, it is an investigation into medieval traditions in ancient worlds.

The medical traditions of the Islamic world and Japan have failed to receive proper attention as independent traditions. Recent studies on theorizing the history of medicine and science have been done by specialists in Greek, Roman, or European science, but few if any have appropriately situated Asia, especially the Islamic world and Japan, within larger history of science studies. In this way, in addition to its identification of how the Islamic world and Japan conceptualized foreign medicine, this current research project conducts the first comparative study of pre-modern medicine between these two cultures.

The importance of Asia in history of science was broadly raised by Joseph Needham and his work on China. In the period since, the Needham Question has preoccupied many scholars and studies on non-European histories of science have expanded approaches to the study of philosophy and history of science. This research therefore not only centralizes Japan and the Islamic world in its discussion of history of science and medicine, but also decentralizes the field to reframe it as a world history of science and medicine rather than an extension of the Eurocentric model by introducing close studies of non-European traditions into these discussions without premising the analyses on notions gleaned from European histories of science and medicine. Specifically, it introduces Japan and the Islamic world as key areas of study to understand not only Asia but the world at large as well.

For his published work, see:
2018 “Transposing Knowledge: Beyond Translation in the Medieval Islamic and Japanese Medical Literary Traditions” in, ed. Patrick Manning and Abigail Owen, Knowledge in Translation: Global Patterns of Scientific Exchange, 1000-1800 CE, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Mujeeb has given numerous academic talks on this comparative examination between Islamicate and Japanese medicine. He also has a forthcoming article on the subject related to medical education and is preparing a manuscript on the larger study.