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Ben Kingsley, Medical Stuff, Medieval Islam, Medieval Persia, Movies I Hate, Religious Stuff, The Physician, Tom Payne
The majority of The Physician (2013, dir. Philip Stölzl, based on the novel by Noah Gordon) takes place in and around Isfahan sometime in the later 1020s, as we watch the Englishman Rob Cole (Tom Payne) studying medicine at the hospital run by the great Muslim intellectual Ibn Sina (Ben Kingsley). I really applaud the film for choosing a settling so unfamiliar to Western audiences, and for trying to depict one of the cultural glories of medieval Islam, namely its Golden Age, when Muslim intellectuals were at the forefront of human knowledge, well beyond Western Civilization. The film’s prologue text even foregrounds the superiority of Islamic medicine over Western medicine. Given the current tendency in the West to view Islam as a religion of violent, intolerant extremists, such an attitude is a nice corrective.
The film also deserves some credit for showing some of the religious complexity of the Islamic world. In the film, Isfahan is a Muslim city but it also hosts Jews and Zoroastrians. And the film acknowledges that the different religions are judged according to their own laws rather than Muslim law. So the film makes an attempt to show the relative tolerance that characterized Muslim society.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that the film actually gets things right. In fact, the film rather subtly undermines its message of Islamic medical superiority with its choice to make its hero an Englishman. And the film wildly bends the facts at a couple of key points.
The Plague
One of the major crises of the film occurs when the Bubonic Plague breaks out in Isfahan. People start dying, naturally, and the shah orders the gates locked, trapping everyone inside. But the brave scholars of the hospital reject the chance to leave before the gates are shut, deciding that they will stay and treat the sick.
Eventually, Rob realizes that the disease is transmitted by rat fleas, so Ibn Sina orders the use of rat poison and all the rats die, effectively ending the plague once the bodies are burned. There are problems with that idea; the poison isn’t likely to kill all the rats (especially since rats are notoriously cautious about what they eat), and the fleas that prefer to host on rats are more than capable of hosting on humans, since that’s how the disease gets passed to and between humans.
Ibn Sina (Kingsley) tracking the number of deaths from the Plague
Oh, and there’s also the small problem that there was no outbreak of the Black Death between the 7th century and the 14th century. This epidemic is entirely fictitious. (But, to be fair, it’s not inconceivable that the Bubonic Plague could have broken out somewhere in this period.)
But the real problem to my eyes is that in a hospital full of Persian, Arabic, and Jewish scholars, including Ibn Sina, who is explicitly presented as the greatest living medical expert in the world, it’s the one plucky European who figures out that the Plague is transmitted by fleas. So while the film is presenting Islamic medicine as being superior to Western medicine, it takes a Westerner to figure out how to apply Islamic medicine to treat the problem.
The Dissection
During the epidemic, Rob suggests dissecting a corpse to see if the buboes could be surgically excised, but Ibn Sina refuses, saying that Islam forbids dissection. The lack of anatomical knowledge due to a supposed ban on dissection of corpses is a theme in the film. But although contemporary Islam does see medical dissection as a problematic issue, most contemporary experts on Islamic law agree that it’s permissible with a few limitations, and there’s no clear evidence that medieval Muslims were much different. A number of medieval Islamic medical experts supported the practice. So it’s unlikely that Ibn Sina would have refused to dissect a body in the middle of a medical crisis if doing so offered hope of a potential treatment.
But after the epidemic, Rob meets an elderly Zoroastrian man who is dying. When he learns that the Zoroastrians place no value on a person’s corpse, when the man dies, Rob hides his body in an ice cellar and over the next several weeks gradually dissects the corpse and draws what he sees.
Rob dissecting the old man’s corpse
However, there’s a villainous mullah in Isfahan, one who is in league with the Seljuk Turks who want to conquer Isfahan, and the mullah has agreed to cause trouble in the city. The mullah’s motives aren’t really clear, except that he’s a fanatic who thinks the shah is too lax. The mullah despises the hospital for being unislamic and orders his men to search it. They find the dissected corpse and drag Rob and Ibn Sina in front of the mullah, who sentences them both to death.
There’s a lot wrong here. It’s a wild misrepresentation of how Muslim communities operate. Mullahs are Shiite religious expects; they lead mosques, deliver sermons, and perform a variety of rituals that make them very loosely the equivalent of a Christian priest or minister. But like Christian priests, they have no legal authority and no power to compel people to obey them. The medieval Islamic court system was staffed by qadis, men who were trained in sharia (Islamic law) and then appointed to their office by the local ruler to act as a judge. Some mullahs were qualified to act as qadis, and vice versa, but the two offices were as distinct as a priest and a judge are today. And the villainous cleric is definitely a mullah; he’s shown preaching sermons in a mosque. So the mullah would not have any more legal authority to order someone’s execution than my Lutheran minister father did. And it’s highly unlikely that the shah would have allowed the execution of his star physician anyway. And, so far as I can tell, mutilating corpses was not a capital offense in medieval sharia. But, if I have learned anything in writing this blog, it’s that in the cinematic past, clergy just made up the law as they went, so they could use religion to justify absolutely anything they wanted.
The Operation
However, before Rob and Ibn Sina can be executed, the shah’s men arrive. The shah is having an attack of “side sickness”, Ye Olde Timey name for appendicitis, which won’t be medically recognized for another 500 years. And of course, appendicitis requires invasive surgery, which can’t be done without a good knowledge of anatomy, so there’s nothing to be done. Except that, totes coincidence!, Rob has just acquired a good knowledge of anatomy by dissecting that corpse. So Ibn Sina helps Rob operate on the shah and save his life by removing his appendix.
Again, the film glosses over a number of big problems here. Sure, Rob has learned a lot about anatomy, but how does he know that ‘side sickness’ is caused by the appendix as opposed to any other organ, and how does he know that removing the appendix is the right way to treat the condition? How do they deal with the problem of blood loss in an age that has no ability to perform transfusions? They drug with shah with opium to anesthetize him, so at least the script considers that issue. But the whole scenario is just wildly implausible.
And once again, the film resorts to the Westerner saving the day by employing Islamic medicine in a way that Muslims weren’t able to do, in this case because their religion is an obstacle to the advance of science. The greatest physician in the Muslim world is reduced to helping his English student perform an operation because the Englishman has miraculously surpassed him just by cutting open a corpse. So after establishing the superiority of Islamic medicine, the film subtly reasserts the notion that Islam is an obstacle to science.
And that view of Islam as backward is reinforced by the villainous mullah, who hates the hospital simply because it’s unislamic in some unspecified way. This point is driven home because, while Rob and Ibn Sina are operating on the shah, the mullah’s men are ransacking the hospital and lighting it on fire, and, for good measure, they attack the Jewish quarter as well, killing a lot of the Jews and burning down the synagogue. Rob conveniently finishes up the operation in time to rescue the Jews trapped in the synagogue’s mikvah. So once again, our Western hero saves the day from the forces of Islamic irrationality.
Rob and Ibn Sina watching the library burn
The film wants to show how scientifically advanced and religiously tolerant the Islamic world was, but it still somehow manages to fall prey to the clichés about Muslims being fanatical, hostile to non-Muslims, and anti-intellectual, and it resorts to the trope of the Westerner rescuing all the non-Westerners who are simply incapable of making the intellectual leaps that he is capable of.
Oh, and One More Thing
When Rob Cole gets back to England, he founds a hospital, 300 years before such things will exist in Western Europe. Have I mentioned lately that I hate this film?
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The Physician
An Historian Goes to the Movies 
“The film wants to show how scientifically advanced and religiously tolerant the Islamic world was, but it still somehow manages to fall prey to the clichés about Muslims being fanatical, hostile to non-Muslims, and anti-intellectual”
Summed it up. Not to mention how during the caravan and afterwards, the ‘Muslims’ tossed Rob around, addressing him as “Hey Jew”– Muslims in that era were largely known for their hospitality and tolerance, especially to travelers and foreigners. Read historical accounts, would you, Hollywood. Sheesh
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And this hostility between Muslims and Jews is much mire of a 20th century issue than a medieval one.
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My biggest problem with the movie was the non-treatment of the language barrier. Just how did Rob Cole learn Farsi?
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Yes. But very few films make any effort to address the language issue at all. So I just sort of take that as an element of the genre.
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Also, he did have two year’s-worth of travel to get there. I figured he befriended someone along the way who taught him. But ya, they did brush over that issue.
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Pingback: The Physician: Who the Heck is Ibn Sina? | An Historian Goes to the Movies
And the one women pictured was necessary for romance.
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Yeah, there’s a helping of Woman as Prize here.
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“The film wants to show how scientifically advanced and religiously tolerant the Islamic world was, but it still somehow manages to fall prey to the clichés about Muslims being fanatical, hostile to non-Muslims, and anti-intellectual”
Honestly? I find that far fetched about the movie, who makes it quite clear that Kassim or the other muslims, including the Shah are tolerant and accepting, despite their own flaws.
The muslims being fanatical are, you know, fanatics. And the jews are not depicted any better, what with the all “stone the pregnant adulteress” thing, and let’s not forget the christians at the beginning, burning the barber and beating him.
Honestly, I found that the movie was hammering a bit too much that “Religious fanaticism is bad for science, mmmkay?”, but imho it does not specifically single out Islam.
And the whole englishman-saves-the-day can be chalked up to the other theme of the film -he mixing and conflict of cultures-, and that it is, you know, marketed towards westerners.
The bubonic plague/hospital accuracies are spot on, though, and my biggest beef was the unnecessary romantic plot tumor (ha!), but honestly, i didn’t find the movie isn’t anti-islamic in the slightest.
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I agree that the film is trying to show that some of the Muslims are tolerant and open-minded. But despite that, it manages to show other Muslims as being intolerant, and in fact distorts historical facts to make that point (there is a difference between a mullah at a mosque and a qadi in a law court, but the film collapses the two together). So it manages to reiterate the idea that Muslims have no distinction between their religious leadership and their judges.
There is a difference between what a film intends to say and what it actually winds up saying. This is a point I’ve made a number of times in this blog.
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Well then, why do your criticisms focus on the perception of Islam in this movie?
I mean “the film is trying to show that some of the Muslims are tolerant and open-minded” Which it does. “But despite that, it manages to show other Muslims as being intolerant”, well, sure. Some Muslims are fanatics. The Islamic golden age makes no exception.
There’s more inaccuracies in the movie on the point of history and religion though: if the clergy were shia muslim, then there’s very little chance that they would have made an alliance with the sunni Seldjuks. Also, the Seldjuks, at the time, were strong protectors of arts and science, starting in earnest a bit later with Malik Shah. Avicennes didn’t die in the burning of his library, but ironically from his own remedy against gastric problems, and such.
But why protest that “there is a difference between a mullah at a mosque and a qadi in a law court, but the film collapses the two together” when at the same time you mention that “Some mullahs were qualified to act as qadis” ?
I mean, the distinction between both in sunni Islam is even slimer, and so if we consider the clergy to be sunni, opposed to a shia ruler, that would even make more sense!
I think it’s perfectly legitimate to believe that an assembly of religious figures would be asked to judge on a accusation that is clearly “blasphematory” in nature.
I mean, imho my problem with the movie is more that human dissections at the time were not that frowned upon, like you mentionned.
The film makes it quite evident that there’s tolerant religious people and fanatic religious people, in all 3 religions presented. Islam takes more importance, sure, but that’s because the central part of the movie happens in a muslim country.
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“But why protest that “there is a difference between a mullah at a mosque and a qadi in a law court, but the film collapses the two together” when at the same time you mention that “Some mullahs were qualified to act as qadis” ?”
Some Christian ministers have law degrees, and are therefore qualified to be judges. But an imam/mulla was not automatically a qadi. So the film collapses the very important difference between the two offices. And it depicts fanatical Muslims doing something that never happened–the destruction of Ibn Sina’s hospital/university.
This is a good example of my principle that the important question is not ‘is this film inaccurate?’ but rather ‘why is this film being inaccurate about this particular thing?’ By fabricating a group of intolerant Muslims who destroy the central location of the movie, the film is saying something about Muslims, even if it doesn’t intend to. It’s contributing to an image of Muslims as intolerant, irrational, and anti-medicine, because it’s building the climax of the film around that idea. Is the viewer likely to remember that Muslims are tolerant or intolerant? Since the tolerant Muslims lose, I’d argue the film is emphasizing the intolerant ones.
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Honestly, I find that your interpretation is far fetched.
Especially that historically and still today, islamic law courts are staffed by muslim theology specialists and preachers, and judge not only matter of faith, but also matter of civil law. The mufti/mullah is as much a preacher, a religious cleric, as a maker of fatwas, which are legal opinions. So, no, I think that there’s not a”very important difference between the two offices” in Islam. I mean, that’s even a significant difference between Islam and Judaism on one side (with the Sharia and the Levitic laws), and Christianism on the other side.
” it depicts fanatical Muslims doing something that never happened–the destruction of Ibn Sina’s hospital/university.” I agree much more with this point.
However, is the film really “contributing to an image of Muslims as intolerant, irrational, and anti-medicine”? I think not specifically. Look at it this way: does it contribute to an image of Christians as intolerant, irrational, and anti-medicine? Does it contribute to an image of Jews as intolerant, irrational, and pregnant adulteresses murderers?
Because it shows all that. And the Christians not only burned the Mentor’s medicine shack, but also let the Hero’s mother die by inaction. The Jews were ready to stone a pregnant woman. And the movie makes it clear that while the muslims have a head of state who’s a minimum compassionate, the Christian and Jewish community pilars does not fare so good.
The film is quite clear in showing us that the Hero is a compassionate Christian, his jewish friend an understanding and loyal Jew, and his muslim friend a heroic and carefree Muslim. In opposition to other parts of their own respective societies.
What irks me in your otherwise very valid criticism of the movie, is that it seems to me that you somehow hold the Muslims as by nature tolerant and immune to fanatism. And since the movie shows the victory of the fanatic muslims, you consider that the movie emphasises that ALL muslims are like this. Well, this movie simply doesn’t ends on a full happy-end, acknowledge that sometimes evil wins but good should endure, and I’m okay with that.
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“Look at it this way: does it contribute to an image of Christians as intolerant, irrational, and anti-medicine? ”
It absolutely does contribute to the image of medieval Christians as irrational and anti-medicine. That’s the whole point of my first post on the film.
I think we’ll just have to disagree about what the film is saying to its viewers.
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Exactly, so I was surprised to see that in this second post, the muslims are singled out as kind of having a special treatment.
Yep, I guess we have to agree to disagree:)
The only thing left is that I still disagree that the separation between the judge and the preacher is so strong, especially in Islam. I mean, the Charia for example is a religious civil law, interpreted by judges who are also theologians and usually have preaching in their history. Of course that’s for Sunni Islam.
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I appreciated the complex situations presented in the film and found the intelligent, thoughtful and respectful discussion enjoyable and enlightening.
Personally, I think any film that presents ideas and garners such interesting discussion a winner. Although I was aware medieval Islamic culture was stark in contrast to medieval Christian culture, I haven’t been aware of any movies on this topic. Any suggestions?
I will be visiting my library to find information on Ibn Sina.
Thanks!
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You mean movie about the medieval Islamic world? I haven’t run across too many of them, unfortunately, especially in English.
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The scene with the Jewish woman about to stoned is bit of a stretch. Capital punishment in Judaism is more theory than practice. Even in theory, the rule was abolished in the year 40 A.D. That a small Jewish community in far flung Persia should stone an adulteress is ridicules.
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That’s a good point. It’s another example of religious authorities doing whatever they want in movies.
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I’ve read the books all of them several times and they are infinitely better than the movie about which all your points are well taken. I’m watching the movie where Rob Cole is chipping ICE to apply to the forehead of his feverish girlfriend and I’m wondering where in the hell they got ice in the Middle East !
They also give him a completely different love interest in the movie which is far inferior to the one in the book.
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Ice was actually brought down from the mountains by special courtiers. The Persians invented sherbet–fruit juice mixed with ice. So that’s actually not that improbable a detail. But just the fact that Gordon gave his hero a literally impossible name speaks volumes to me about his seriousness in writing history
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Hello,
I just watched the movie. I guess better late than never? I would like to add one more issue. So during the plague crisis, the physicians dissect a dog to learn more about the bubos. Except ooops, dogs don’t get the plague. They can transmit it, but symptoms of plague are mild to not-apparent in canines.
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That’s incorrect. Dogs can contract the plague, although they are more resistant to it than humans are–for example they will develop buboes on the lymph nodes, but that is less likely to prove fatal to a dog than a human. Cats get the disease roughly the same way humans do.
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+2102&aid=337
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Okay, let’s please use peer-reviewed source material. Find me something in Pubmed, not “research” from the general internet.
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Fair enough–I’m not a veterinarian, so I’m willing to be disproven here. But everything I have read has emphasized that a wide range of mammals can get the Plague. Medieval sources mention dogs, cats, and pigs dying from the disease. It is endemic in rodents in many regions (such as the American Southwest and Rocky Mountain region). Carnivores such as coyotes, foxes, and bobcats are known to get it, as are goats, camels, antelopes, and similar beasts. Horses are less likely to acquire it, but can.
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Also,that article states dogs can become infected. I never said they couldn’t. Infection does not equal symptomatic. As a plague scientist, I actually do know what I’m talking about.
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If you are a plague specialist, I will bow to your authority on the matter. But note the article I posted (and several others I looked at) says they can become symptomatic–mostly buboes.
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I should also say that I love your blog. Just found it, big fan already:-)
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Thanks
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Excellent review: you pointed out several of the many problems I found as well.
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Glad you liked it. The review, not the movie, that is.
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Thank you for this series of reviews!
Here’s a bonus: the story of Aladdin wouldn’t be written for another six hundred years or so after the events portrayed in the film.
Things like this make it so that I can’t just relax and enjoy a historical film: no-one will do basic research before vomiting one out, so they are invariably filled with howlers that ruin my night (sometimes, my week).
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Sounds like the film got Last Samurai’d. I don’t know why they didn’t have the famous philosopher/physician Ibn Sina perform the operation using the knowledge they gained from the dissection (which still wouldn’t have provided any kind of a baseline for what healthy organs are supposed to look like, but i digress), while Rob rescued the Jews at the synagogue. Then the westerner would get to do something heroic, without making it look like an episode of House, MD, where House solves everything, and everyone else stands around with their thumbs up their asses.
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I agree that this film is bogus, which is why I searched the net to find someone who shared my view. Thankyou for this excellent blog. I can’t believe all those millions were wasted assembling such a load of crud.
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Hi
I wanted to add that it is no longer topical (writing this in 2021) that there was no plague outbreak between the seventh and fourteenth century. I have personally studied outbreaks in the eleventh and twelfth century in western China, among other’s controlled by the famous physician Li Gao Li 李杲 (1180–1251). In 1226, after Yelü Chcai conquered the territory between Taiyin and Lingwu, Li Gao had success in treating plague with rheum officialis. Later, Marco Polo explained the rhubarb trade to Venecia which was very strong and in the 1560s the Venetian physician Puteo treated black death with rhubarb successfully! Li Jianshi replicated successful treatment in the laboratory in 1935 but had no occasion to verify. Most recent studies revealed that it could have worked, although we are not exactly sure how he did it. Chinese rhubarb is much higher in oxalic acid than the cuisine one, oxalic acid binds calcium, yersinia pestis needs a calcium-rich environment to be contagious.
Elsewhere in China, physicians had some success using “Tibetan Safflower” in complex drugs but it is not known how it exactly worked and could not be replicated yet.
Aside from that, there were several smaller plague outbreaks in Central Asia and the Middle East as well as the famous southern Russian ones in 1338 which are among the possible source areas for the European pandemic shortly later.
I’m just watching the movie once again on TV. To me, it has a deeply anti-religious message that is not targeting any specifically. I was irritated by what was supposed to be a mullah as well, but that is in the west still special knowledge. No religious person gets away well in this movie, they are all depicted as misted and flawed. What irritated me most was the claim that the Persians were tolerant to Jews and Zoroastrians but not to Christians? That’s news to me, Christians were able to be considered dhimmi as well, I am no expert for that era and area, but it strikes me weird.
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