Galen beyond Baghdad

Abstract This chapter argues that Galen gave medieval Islamicate authors an autobiographical discourse on which to draw to position themselves as more uniquely qualified than their peers and predecessors, including Galen himself, to improve their respective sciences. Focusing on individuals born outside of Baghdad, the chapter first investigates how the mathematician Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1039) and the theologian al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) appropriated Galen’s narrative about his youthful search for knowledge to distinguish Aristotelian philosophy and Sufism, rather than geometry, as the surest path to truth. The second half highlights how the doctors Ibn Riḍwān (988–1061) and al-Rāzī (d. 925) utilized Galen’s tactics of self-presentation—specifically, the link that he establishes between himself and Hippocrates and his claims of doctrinal independence—to supplant his medical authority.