WCMC-Q Professor Donates Antiquarian Islamic Book

August 2008

In a generous act of respect for both Islamic culture and his own family heritage, WCMC-Q Professor and Vice Chair of Surgery, Bakr Nour, MD, FACS, recently donated a valuable antiquarian book to the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Doha, Qatar.

The handwritten transcript entitled Al Shifaa Fi Akhbar Al Mostafa (which he translated as Healing in the News of the Prophet Mohammad) is believed to be roughly 450 years old and has been in Dr. Nour's family for more than 100 years. Acquired by his grandfather in the late 1800s, the book was handed down to his father and finally to Dr. Nour himself.

What may be more valuable than even the gold leaf that frames each page is the message of the book's content. Not a medical book in the modern sense, its focus is mental and spiritual healing as experienced during the time of the Prophet.

Dr. Nour believes its message holds an important place in the practice of medicine today, and takes care to convey that to his students. "It was written more than 450 years ago," he said, "but still there are things that apply to today’s life."

"Medicine alone," Nour explained, "surgery alone, do not work if you don’t focus on the human being as a whole, and his spirit, his mind, his brain. And then you fix whatever you need to fix."

Opportunities to sell the transcript, either intact or page-by-page as art pieces, were both plentiful and profitable. But Dr. Nour felt that to do so would be to dishonor his father and grandfather who had kept it in the family for so long.

As the book aged and began to deteriorate, he believed the best way to safeguard this historical treasure for posterity would be to donate it to an Islamic museum with the resources to preserve it properly.

The MIA is the first of five national museums planned for the Doha Harbor area, and is currently expected to open to the public in late 2008. Dr. Nour is proud to know that the transcript is now slated to join the MIA's gallery collection where it can be viewed and enjoyed by all.

"I'm glad I did it," he said.

Report by Chris Gibbons