Category:Unani herbs

A Unani herb is a plant medicine used within the Unani-Tibb system, the Greco-Arabic medical tradition that descended from the Greek humoural medicine of Hippocrates and Galen through the Arabic scholarly synthesis of the eighth to twelfth centuries, and that continues today as a regulated medical system in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The name Unani is the Arabic adjective meaning "Greek" (yūnānī); the system preserves the four-humour theory (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) of the Hippocratic corpus and integrates it with Islamic spiritual and ethical practice, with subsequent additions from Persian, Indian, and Chinese sources.

The foundational text of the system is the Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), completed around 1025 CE. The Canon's five books cover medical principles, materia medica, organ-specific disease, generalised disease, and pharmacology and compounding; the second book alone contains 800 simple-medicine monographs. The Canon was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the twelfth century at Toledo and served as the principal medical textbook of European universities for the next six hundred years. The other foundational texts are the Kitab al-Hawi of Al-Razi (Rhazes) (the ninth-century encyclopaedic compilation), the Kitab al-Saidana fi al-Tibb of Al-Biruni (the eleventh-century pharmacognosy treatise), and the Tadhkirat al-Kahhalin of Ali ibn Isa for ophthalmology. The Tibb al-Nabawi (Prophetic Medicine) literature, codified by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya in the fourteenth century, integrates the hadith-based medicinal recommendations of the Prophet Muhammad with the formal Unani framework.

The Unani materia medica of central clinical importance includes the Five Cardinal Prophetic Herbs identified by John Andrew Morrow in his Encyclopedia of Islamic Herbal Medicine (2011): Habba al-Sawda (black seed, Nigella sativa, the subject of the famous hadith "in the black seed is healing for every disease except death"), Asal (honey, with extensive Qur'anic and hadith documentation), Zait al-Zaytun (olive oil, Olea europaea), Tamr (dates, Phoenix dactylifera), and Sana (senna, Cassia senna, the cathartic from the eastern Mediterranean coast). The Avicenna pharmacopoeia adds frankincense (Kundur, Boswellia sacra), saffron (Za'faran, Crocus sativus), camphor (Kafur, Cinnamomum camphora, with the explicit Avicenna safety caveats that remain clinically relevant), Indian costus (Qust, Saussurea costus), and the antiparasitic Syrian rue (Harmal, Peganum harmala), among many others.

The contemporary Unani-medicine system, regulated in India through the Department of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy) and in Pakistan through the National Council for Tibb, trains practitioners through five-year degree programmes (the BUMS, Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Surgery) and has a substantial outpatient and inpatient infrastructure. The pharmaceutical preparations follow classical formulations: sharbat (medicated syrups), ma'jun (electuaries), safuf (powders), qurs (tablets), habb (pills), ruh (essential oils), roghan (medicated oils), and mufarrih (cardiac exhilarant compound formulations, the classical category of which the saffron-based Mufarrih al-Qulub is the most famous). The interaction with Western pharmaceutical science has been substantial: the Hijama (cupping) practice has entered Western complementary care; the antifebrile and antimicrobial uses of several Unani herbs have been validated in controlled trials; and the contemporary research on Nigella sativa (over a thousand published controlled studies) has placed it in the Western herbal-medicine mainstream.

The Unani herbs of established use, as documented in the Canon of Medicine and in the modern AYUSH pharmacopoeia, are progressively indexed as their individual monographs are built. The foundational set: black seed (Nigella sativa), olive (Olea europaea), date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), senna (Cassia senna), frankincense (Boswellia sacra), myrrh (Commiphora myrrha), saffron (Crocus sativus), camphor (Cinnamomum camphora), cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum), fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum), Indian costus (Saussurea costus), pomegranate (Punica granatum), fig (Ficus carica), miswak (Salvadora persica), sidr (Ziziphus spina-christi), gum arabic (Acacia senegal), the za'tar / sa'tar group (Thymus and Origanum species), Syrian rue (Peganum harmala), violets (Viola odorata), and the classical compound formulas built on these.

The boundary of this category is "plant medicine of established use in the Unani-Tibb tradition, with a dedicated wiki monograph." Herbs whose use is shared between Unani and the adjacent traditions (Ayurveda through the Sufi-Vedanta synthesis, Western herbalism through the Latin translation of the Canon) are cross-indexed across all the relevant tradition categories per the multi-membership rule. The classical Unani theoretical framework (the four humours, the temperaments, the powers and faculties) is described on the main Unani article and on the individual herb pages where the theory informs the clinical use. Compound formulas (the classical mufarrih, ma'jun, and sharbat preparations) are referenced on the individual plant pages where they appear.

This category page is an encyclopedia article about its subject. The actual index of herbs belonging to the category is generated automatically by the wiki engine, from category-membership declarations on the individual herb pages, and appears at the foot of the page below the references.