Category: History of Movement Disorders
Objective: To examine the historical scientific contributions of Rhazes and Avicenna and investigate their approach towards sensorimotor control and movement disorders.
Background: Medieval Persia has known historically a rise in medical sciences during the Islamic Golden Age with famous figures such as Rhazes and Avicenna synthetizing earlier medical knowledge, enriching it with their clinical contributions, and systematic methodological approaches. These contributions included a better understanding of neurological disorders including movement disorders.
Method: Rhazes and Avicenna’s books “Kitab al-Hawi fi al-Tibb” and “Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb’ were examined in Internet Archive to investigate how they approached sensorimotor function and diagnosed and treated movement disorders.
Results: Both books contained early descriptions of sensorimotor control and movement disorders. Rhazes book Al-Hawi contained in its “diseases of the head” first chapter, sections to discuss “tremor’’ and “sensorimotor dysfunction”. Avicenna’s work contained four books divided to Arts with different teachings. The second Art of the first book discussed “Human psychic perceptive and motor faculties” and “The causes of abnormal movements”. The second Art of the fourth book contained detailed sections describing the semiology and treatment of “spasms” and “tremor”.
Conclusion: Despite their antiquity, the works of Rhazes and Avicenna demonstrate remarkable systematic reasoning and semiological rigor. Their inclusive multicultural approach in addressing medical knowledge allowed a wholistic perspective in considering human disease. Neurological disorders particularly, were considered from an ecological, bodily, sensory, and neural perspectives, anticipating findings confirmed nowadays by modern medicine.
References: 1. Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al‑Rāzī. Hādhā Kitāb al-Ḥāwī al-Kabīr. ca. 900 AD. Available from: http://archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-108941-466
2. Avicenna. Kitāb al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb (Canon of Medicine). 980–1037. Available from: http://archive.org/details/4770566_1.med.yale.edu
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
L. Ali. Early Descriptions of Sensorimotor Control and Movement Disorders in the Medieval Islamic Golden Age: Insights from Rhazes (Al Razi) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2026; 41 (suppl 1). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/early-descriptions-of-sensorimotor-control-and-movement-disorders-in-the-medieval-islamic-golden-age-insights-from-rhazes-al-razi-and-avicenna-ibn-sina/. Accessed October 1, 2026.« Back to 2026 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/early-descriptions-of-sensorimotor-control-and-movement-disorders-in-the-medieval-islamic-golden-age-insights-from-rhazes-al-razi-and-avicenna-ibn-sina/