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Early mutakallimūn who are said to have been physicians themselves or had a keen interest in medical subjects were usually acquainted with non-Galenic medicine and practitioners of indigenous medical traditions. Particularly noteworthy are recurrent reports about contacts with physicians of Indian origin:

(Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist (n. 4 above), vol. II/1, pp. 224, 315 f.; Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ (n. 4 above), pp. 473–6 (ʿulamāʾ al-Hind); S. Pines, ‘A Study of the Impact of Indian, mainly Buddhist Thought on some Aspects of Kalām Doctrines’, JSAI, 17, 1994, pp. 182–203; M. Shefer-Mossensohn and K. Abou Hershkovitz, ‘Early Muslim Medicine and the Indian Context: A Reinterpretation’, Medieval Encounters, 19, 2013, pp. 274–99 (277–82); F. Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (hereafter GAS), Bd. 3: Medizin, Pharmazie, Zoologie, Tierheilkunde, bis ca. 430H, Leiden, 1970, pp. 187–202; Ullmann, Die Medizin (n. 3 above), pp. 105, 324; Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (n. 5 above), p. 20; H. Daiber, Das theologischphilosophische System des Muʿammar Ibn ʿAbbād as-Sulamī (gest. 830n. Chr.), Beirut, Wiesbaden, 1975, pp. 4–5, 11 with n. 1, 76–8, 311, 407–409; van Ess, TG (n. 1 above), vol. II, pp. 20 f. (on the Sumanīya and Indian physicians in Baṣra and at the court of Hārūn al-Rašīd), pp. 397 f. (al-Aṣamm’s contact to Indian physicians and an alleged journey to India); ibid., p. 487 and vol. III, p. 373 (Ǧaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s conversation with Indian physicians); vol. VI, p. 161. Al-Ǧāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, ed. A. M. Hārūn, Cairo, 1938–45, vol. 2, p. 140, refers to a group of mutakallimūn such as Maʿmar (Muʿammar) Abū l-Ašʿaṯ (van Ess, TG [n. 1 above], vol. II, pp. 37–41), Abū Ǧaʿfar Muḥammad ibn al-Ǧahm al-Barmakī (ibid., vol. III, pp. 204–8) and Ibrāhīm ibn al-Sindī (ibid., pp. 65 f.) who are dubbed ‘the physicians who are the philosophers among the mutakallimūn’ (alaṭibbāʾ, wa-hum falāsifat al-mutakallimīn).

All three entertained contacts to physicians of Indian origin (ibid., vol. II, pp. 21, 37) and clearly represent non-Galenic medical traditions. Unusual are mutakallimphysicians of the sort of Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥusayn al-Kātib (‘Ibn Karnīb’), mentioned in Ibn al-Nadīm, alFihrist (n. 4 above), vol. II/1, p. 198).
Those, however, who – as for instance al-Naẓẓām (d. ca. 836), al-Ǧāḥiẓ (d. 869), or Abū l-Qāsim al-Balḫī (d. 931) – had frequent opportunities to swap ideas with physicians and by all accounts also gained a fair amount of doxographical and even first-hand knowledge of Galenic medicine, rhetorically disowned it and challenged some of its fundamental principles:
See van Ess, TG (n. 1 above), vol. IV, p. 1048 (index ‘Galen’). For al-Naẓẓām see Job of Edessa (Ayyūb alRuhāwī al-Abraš, d. 835; GAS [n. 8 above], vol. III, pp. 230 f.), Book of Treasures (Keṯāḇā ḏe-Sīmāṯā), ed. A. Mingana, Cambridge, 1935, pp. 388–92 (Syr.), 153–9 (transl.); van Ess, TG (n. 1 above), vol. III, pp. 333, 352 f.; vol. VI, pp. 81–83 (text XXII 93), pp. 86–94 (texts XXII 98–104); Y. T. Langermann, ‘Islamic Atomism and the Galenic Tradition’, History of Science, 47, 2009, pp. 277–95 (286–8, with nn. 48–60, pp. 294 f.); D. Bennet, ‘The Spirit of Ahypokeimenonical Physics: Another Side of Kalām Natural Philosophy’, PhD diss., University of California, 2011, pp. 60 f.; Isḥāq al-Isrāʾīlī, Kitāb al-Usṭuqussāt/al-Ǧawāhir (see references in Langermann, ‘Islamic Atomism’, pp. 287 f., 294); Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Sahl Ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. M. Z. Siddiqi, Berlin, 1928, pp. 522 f. (Bāb fī l-radd ʿalā man abṭala l-ṭibb). For al-Ǧāḥiẓ see al-Radd ʿalā l-Naṣārā, in Rasāʾil al-Ǧāḥiẓ, ed. M. Hārūn, Cairo, 1964, vol. 3, p. 314; J. E. Montgomery, ‘Speech and Nature: al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn, 2. 175–207, Part 4’, Middle Eastern Literatures, 12, 2009, pp. 213–232 (p. 228, n. 15); id., Al-Jāḥiẓ: In Praise of Books (n. 7 above), pp. 315 f., 383–7.
Note that all references to Muʿtazilī scholars of the Miḥna-period in GAS (n. 8 above), vol. III (‘Medizin’) are found in the section on zoology and veterinary medicine: Bišr ibn alMuʿtamir (ibid., p. 359); al-Naẓẓām (ibid., pp. 360 f.); al-Ǧāḥiẓ (ibid., p. 368). For Abū l-Qāsim al-Balḫī see R. El Omari, The Theology of Abū l-Qāsim al-Balkhī/al-Kaʿbī (d. 319/931), Leiden, 2016, pp. 147 f., 176–81.
Conversely, a mutakallim like Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 1044), who in the late tenth and early eleventh century studied some theoretical and practical Galenic medicine as well as Aristotelian logic and physics with exponents of the Christian Peripatetics in Baghdad, was disparaged by his fellow Muʿtazilites as maverick dissenter who had fouled the nest of his kalām teachers. Physicians and falāsifa on their part were quick to make patronizing and sneering remarks about the mutakallimūn’s deficient methods and their lack of sophistication and perspicacity.
In previous scholarship several cross-pollinations and phenomenological or terminological similarities between early kalām doctrines and Galenic concepts or nonGalenic ideas transmitted via the medical literature have been mooted. In-depth investigations of the relevant topics, however, are still pending. Suffice it here to point to the most salient themes:

(1) Semeiology/semiotics: One of the most striking commonalities between physicians and mutakallimūn is their shared preoccupation with signs (σημεῖον/σημεῖα; τεκμήριον/τεκμήρια dalīl/adilla; ʿalāma/ʿalāmāt; amāra/amārāt), signification (dalāla) and sign-interpretation (istidlāl). In kalām, signs and indicators play a central role in uṣūl al-dīn (notably prophetology), legal methodology (uṣūl al-fiqh), jurisprudence and Qurʾanic exegesis. In Galen’s works the most important places for a discussion of signs are the introduction to On the Sects (Fī firaq al-ṭibb), which discusses the position of sign-based knowledge (ʿilm al-ʿalāmāt wa-l-dalāʾil / al-ʿilm bi-l-adilla) within the medical science, the second part of Ars medica (al-ṣināʿa al-ṣaġīra/al-ṭibbīya, esp. chapters 6–22)which in Latin translations bears the section title De Signis, and the Commentary on Hippocrates’ ‘Prognostic’. For a synoptic view of Greek text (ed. C. G. Kühn) and Arabic translation (ed. M. S. Sālim) see http://www.graeco-arabic-studies.org/texts.html (accessed 31/10/2015). A sub-branch of semeiology is symptomatology (τέχνη σημειωτική; ʿilm alʿilal wa-l-aʿrāḍ), symptoms (‘things happening’, ‘characteristics’, ‘attributes’) being a special category of signs (T. A. Sebeok, ‘Galen in Medical Semiotics’, in id., Global Semiotics, Bloomington, 2001, pp. 44–58). The evaluation of possible points of contacts between medical semeiology and the interpretation of signs in kalām cosmology, theology, legal and scriptural hermeneutics will require a comprehensive study.
(2) Theories about the relation between signs, the signified and sign interpretation are intrinsically linked to epistemology. Questions about various degrees of certainty, probable knowledge and probabilism are another key topic common to kalām treatises and Galen’s works. A close comparison of similar terms and concepts such as ‘preponderance’ (tarǧīḥ), ‘preponderant presumption’ (ġālib al-ẓann), ‘equivalence of (conflicting) evidence’ (takāfuʾ al-adilla), etc. will also demand a separate in-depth study. This also applies to the ἀναλογισμός, the ‘inference of something hidden from something visible’ (al-istidlāl bi-lšāhid ʿalā l-ġāʾib) of the mutakallimūn and Galen’s ‘inference of something hidden from something apparent’ (al-istidlāl bi-mā ẓahara ʿalā mā ḫafiya / al-qiyās bi-l-ẓāhir ʿalā l-ḫafī).
(3) Structural resemblances between Muʿtazilī and Stoic theories of language usage (utterance-analysis) and meaning have at times also been explained as being mediated through medical literature. An investigation of these supposed affinities will once again require a separate study.
(4) Similarities between Muʿtazilī theories of ‘the optimum’ (al-aṣlaḥ), namely that God knows and does ‘what is best’ for his creatures and that He does nothing in vain (ʿabaṯan), and Galen’s ‘best of all possible worlds’ which combines the providential demiurgy of the Timaeus with Aristotelian teleology, has repeatedly been invoked. It goes without saying that many terminological overlaps may conceal substantial conceptual differences between medical and kalām texts.

Some further facets of the mutakallimūn’s possible indebtedness to Galenism have recently been explored by Y. Tzvi Langermann who suggests that central tenets of kalām atomism, which over the course of the ninth century emerged as the predominant among several competing kalām theories of the physical world, are ‘best understood in the context of a response to Galen’s rejection of atomism’ (Langermann, ‘Islamic Atomism’ (n. 9 above), p. 277 and repeated in id. and G. Bos, ‘An Epitome of Galen’s On the Elements Ascribed to Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 25, 2015, pp. 33– 78). His argumentation is specifically based on the following observations:
(1) The Galenic tradition – in particular Galen’s On the Elements and its satellite literature – contains the richest bank of discussions and refutations of atomism available in Arabic. or a synoptic view of Greek text and Arabic translation see http://www.graeco-arabicstudies.org/texts.html (accessed 31/10/2015).
As Galen himself mentions in De ordine librorum suorum (περὶ τάξεως τῶν ἰδίων βιβλίων, Kitāb fī marātib qirāʾat kutubih, ed. Boudon-Millot, Paris, 2007, p. 93, ll. 9–15) the fullest discussion of his theory of elements, including a refutation of atomism, was to be found in Books 5 and 6 of On the Opinions of Asclepiades (lost) and in Book 13 of On Demonstration. A critical account of Epicurean atomism (aǧzāʾ Afīqūrus allatī lā tataǧazzaʾu) and the associated view that everything happens by chance and randomly (bi-l-baḫt wa-l-ittifāq) is also found in Book 11 of On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (see MS Paris, BNF, ar. 2853, fol. 196r, ll. 3 f.) and the summarizing commentary by Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī al-Iskandarānī (see G. Strohmaier, ‘Der Kommentar des Johannes Grammatikos zu Galen, De usu partium (Buch 11) in einer unikalen Gothaer Handschrift’, in id., Hellas im Islam [n. 6 above], pp. 109–12). Langermann erroneously holds that On the Elements was ‘the first of the sixteen Galenic works that formed the “core curriculum” for medical students in late Antiquity’ (‘Islamic Atomism’ [n. 9 above], p. 278). As correctly stated in Ibn Riḍwān’s commentary on the book, it actually is ‘the first book to be studied by the person who wishes perfection in the art of medicine’ (ibid., p. 282) after having completed the study of the four (or five or six) isagogic writings (see Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Risāla, ed. G. Bergsträsser, in id., Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq über die syrischen und arabischen Galen-Übersetzungen, Leipzig, 1925, pp. 9–10 (ed.), pp. 7–8 (transl.); A. Z. Iskandar, ‘An Attempted Reconstruction of the Late Alexandrian Medical Curriculum’, Medical History, 20:3, 1976, pp. 235–58 (esp. pp. 238, 250, 258).
(2) For some mutakallimūn, Galen and his school – rather than the Peripatetic tradition – ‘represented the authoritative voice of those who … view the natural world as self-contained system functioning under its own laws’ (Langermann, ‘Islamic Atomism’ (n. 9 above), p. 277) that is ‘the type of world-view that they had to reject’. These mutakallimūn may have adopted atomism as a ‘plausible alternative’ to the Galenic world-view, because Galen was so careful to reject it.
(3) The core of Galen’s refutation of atomism in On the Elements revolves around ‘the argument from pain’. It relies on the assumption ‘that what is to suffer pain must be capable of alteration and of sensation’ (Leith, ‘Galen’s Refutation’ (n. 34 above), p. 219.) and therefore ‘presupposes a kind of multiplicity or alterity’. Since atomism posits homogeneous and qualityless particles which are incapable of alteration and affection, it fails – in Galen’s view – to provide an adequate explanation for the phenomenon of pain. Against this backdrop, Muʿtazilī ‘attempts at articulating a biophysical theory of pain are a direct response to Galen’s refutation of atomism’ and ‘can only be understood in terms of their coming to grips with Galen’s anti-atomism’.

In the following first part of this article I will take up the thread of Langermann’s hypotheses and use it as a convenient starting point to elaborate on a few additional factors which have a bearing on the relation between kalām and the medical tradition:

• (1) Galen’s staunch anti-atomism should be viewed in conjunction with his more sceptical and agnostic statements about the foundations of the created world, the createdness or uncreatedness of the world, the nature of the Demiurge-Creator, the substance (οὐσία) of the soul, etc. While he considered his general physical theory of elemental qualities and the ensuing criticism of atomism as ‘necessary or useful’ (ἀναγκαῖον ἢ χρήσιμον) to explaining the structural and functional principles of bodies and hence as requisite know-how for physicians, he at the same time conceded that these foundations, like all fundamental assumptions of physics and speculative philosophy (ἡ θεωρητικὴ φιλοσοφία), are indemonstrable and conjectural and therefore ‘continue to baffle even the best of philosophers up to the present day’. Galen’s agnosticism finds its most elaborate expression in On My Own Opinions, a ‘spiritual testament’ of sorts, in which he distinguishes between ‘things that he knows to be certain, things that he regards as plausible but as yet unproven, and things on which he cannot (yet) make up his mind’. The last group, which comprises the nature of the soul and its relation to the body and the ultimate constituents of matter, ‘he dismisses as irrelevant and inessential both to medical practice and to ethics’. Admitting to such indifference, however, effectively entailed that contrary explanations, such as Epicurean and Democritean atomism, which Galen had rejected in On the Elements, On Demonstration and elsewhere, could not conclusively be refuted.

• The criticism engendered by Galen’s agnostic statements in al-Rāzī’s Doubts or al-Fārābī’s Rebuttal of Galen further enhanced the renown of On My Own Opinions, which in the ninth century circulated in two Syriac translations by Job of Edessa and Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and three Arabic renderings by Ṯābit ibn Qurra, ʿĪsā ibn Yaḥyā and Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq. It is unlikely that the gist of Galen’s agnosticism remained hidden from the mutakallimūn.

• (2) The mutakallimūn of the early ʿAbbāsid period were aware of non-Galenic medical theories that proved compatible with various forms of atomism, be they of Indian, Dualist (e.g. Bardaisanite) or other origin.
• A. Dhanani suggested that the Epicurean doctrine of minimal parts may have come to the attention of the mutakallimūn via Manichaean factions or Bardaisanite Dualism (‘Dayṣānīya’). See his The Physical Theory of Kalām (n. 12 above), pp. 182–7; id., ‘Kalām Atoms and Epicurean Minimal Parts’, in Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-Modern Science held at the University of Oklahoma, ed. F. J. Ragep, S. P. Ragep, with S. Livesey, Leiden, 1996, pp. 157–71 (169 f.). On Bardaisanite cosmology see the references given in J. Teixidor, ‘Bardesane de Syrie’, in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques II: Babélyca d’Argos à Dyscolius, ed. R. Goulet, Paris, 1994, pp. 54–63, no. 11; van Ess, TG (n. 1 above), vol. I, pp. 426–30. For possible connections between Indian theories of atoms and kalām atomism see Pines, Studies in Islamic Atomism (n. 12 above), pp. 117–41 and the references given above in n. 8. On atomism in pre-Galenic ancient medicine see R. A. Horne, ‘Atomism in Ancient Medical History’, Medical History, 7, 1963, pp. 317–29; M. C. Nannini, ‘La teoria atomistica nella filosofia e nella storia della medicina’, Minerva Medica, 54, 1963, pp. 1265–8.

• (3) The refutation of Greek atomism was a recurrent topic in patristic literature, first and foremost in Hexaemeron compositions and commentaries on the Book of Genesis. Greek atomism was equated with a philosophical system which does not recognize a creator-God and views creation as a product of chance rather than divine providence.47 By way of example, I may refer here to one of the oldest and most detailed arguments against Epicurean atomism from a Christian point of view which is found in an extract from On Nature, in Answer to the Epicureans (Περὶ φύσεως πρὸς τοὺς κατ’ Ἐπίκουρον) by Origen’s student Dionysius of Alexandria (d. after 265) and which has been preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Preparation for the Gospel. 48 Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373), who counts among the most widely read Church Fathers in both the West-Syrian and the East-Syrian churches,49 dedicated several paragraphs of his Discourse against Mani to a refutation of Bardaisan’s atomistic cosmogony.5

• (4) A search for points of contact between kalām and the Galenic tradition should attach greater weight to indirect channels of transmission of Galenic ideas and place special emphasis on the fact that Galen and Galenism were assimilated to both Christian and ‘pagan’ systems of religious thought well before the rise of Islam. While Langermann rightly emphasizes the multiple lines of transmission of Galenic works and ideas into Arabic, his reflections mostly relate to Arabic translations of Galen’s works and the milieu of professional physicians.51 This focus on the medical curriculum, the ‘Alexandrian Canon’ of Sixteen Books, or the Alexandrian Summaries tends to overrate their importance for the reception of Galenic ideas in Arabic literature in general and among the mutakallimūn in particular.52 There is, in fact, little to no evidence suggesting that the acquaintance of early mutakallimūn with Galenic ideas was in any way shaped by the medical curriculum.

A case in point is the fifth chapter (‘On the Elements’; Περὶ στοιχείων; Fī lusṭuqussāt) of On the Nature of Man which contains a concise version of the ‘argument from pain’ against atomism in Galen’s On the Elements, the argument that in Langermann’s view prompted the mutakallimūn’s preoccupation with the physiology of pain. The following table juxtaposes Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn’s translation of the ‘argument from pain’ with its paraphrase as it is found in the Secret of Creation: