Abu Zayd al-Balkhi:

Sustenance of the Soul

NABA CHOUDHURY
 • Abu Zayd Ahmad ibn Sahl al-Balkhi
• Persian scholar from Balkh (present-day
Afghanistan)
• Born 849 CE and died 934 CE
• Biographer was Yaqut al Hamawi
Who was Abu • Was very introverted and introspective,
Zayd al- avoided many public social gatherings of his
time.

Balkhi? • Thus, little is known of personal life

• Born in Balkh, but spent most of his life in
Baghdad: Metropolitan city and centre of
Islamic learning at the time
• Capital of the Abbasid caliphate
• Disciple of al-Kindi (famous Arab Muslim
physician, polymath, and philosopher)
 •Polymath (geography, medicine,
theology, politics, philosophy, poetry,
literature, Arabic grammar, astrology,
astronomy, mathematics, ethics,
sociology, etc.)
• Medieval school of cartography
•Known to contemporaries primarily as a
Who was Abu physician

Zayd al- •Authored more than 60 manuscripts

• Linguists of the time attested to his
Balkhi? eloquence:
“Al-Balkhi was more articulate than both since his
words were more eloquent and he was able to
elucidate any topic with ease, whereas in comparison
al-Jahiz was verbose and al-Rayhani, too laconic.”
• Only remaining MS is Masalih al-Abdan
wal-Anfus (Sustenance of the Body and
Soul)
 • Treatise discovered by Sudanese Professor Dr. Malik Badri in the Hagia
Sofia in Istanbul
• Style and organization reads similar to a modern manual of psychology
• Ex. Systematic way he outlines the criteria and symptoms of “OCD”
• 1,200 years ago when the styles were very very different, and his is
not characteristic of his time
• Masalih al-Abdan wa al-Anfus – "Restoration of the body and the
soul”
• First half deals with remedying physical ailments, not unlike other

Masalih al- works of medicine produced around the same period

• Second half: Masalih al-Anfus (Sustenance of the Soul) consists of
separate chapters specifically targeting psychological illnesses
Abdan wal- • Bemoaned the fact that many physicians of his period felt that
psychological illnesses didn't exist, or were just extensions of physical
Anfus illnesses
• He talks about ailments of the body and psychological illnesses
• First cognitive psychologist known so far in history, though not
recognized as such in Western psychology
• The first papers published on the MS were rejected by peer
reviewers
• 3-4 years of background research to determine the MS's veracity;
reviewers saying that this lends to rewriting details of history of
psychology
 •Tradition used by Abu Zayd al-Balkhi that sums up
his approach to mental distress:
•Prophet Muhammad’s son Ibrahim had died, in
the same year that he had lost a grandchild.
Amidst grief and tears he stated:
“The eyes are shedding tears and the heart is
grieving, and we will not say except what
pleases our Lord.”
•3 components to mental distress: physical
Hadith manifestation (tears, mourning), emotional
component (grief of the heart), and cognitive
response (”what pleases our Lord”)
•Hadith Jibril: Islam (body-actions), Iman (mind-
thoughts), Ihsan (heart-feelings)
•Beneficial to physically manifest sadness,
important as a human being to feel emotions
• However, how one thinks about what is
happening is critical in processing the grief
 •Kindi: Psychological pain is result of loss.
• Not loss of objects, but our attitude towards
objects and towards loss itself

•Humans often find themselves attached

to wrong habits
•Training the soul is a process of changing
our attitudes (cognitions)
Al-Balkhi & •Both considered psychological wellbeing
His Teacher > physical
• Kindi: Body is common to all, but soul is
personal to us. Body is a tool. God loans us all
things except our souls. “Remedying our souls
is more important than remedying our
tools.”
• Balkhi: A person may go months, years, without
getting sick, but problems of the soul are
encountered by everyone, every day
 •Distinguishes four types of mental distress,
relating to:
• Sadness
• Anger
• Anxiety
• Obsessions/obsessive misgivings
•Each category exists on a spectrum, having
Types of normal variants and pathological variants
•There is a different way in which you approach the
Mental normal variation and another way in which you
approach the pathological variation
Distress • Example: One root of mental distress is concern
about the future, but distinguishes anxiety
(hamm) from "terror" (faza’)
• Faza’ constitutes what we now would call a
panic attack or panic disorder
• Anxiety has three sources: internal, situational,
and history (i.e.: biological, social, family of
origin)
 •Distinguishes lucidly between sadness
and depression
•Sadness = Hazan
•Depression – Jaza’ (sadness that brings
one to a breaking point)
Depression • New coinage for what we now consider
to be depressive disorder
•Jaza’: sense of being cut open, broken,
cut off from things, extensive, pervasive
pain, being unable to endure something
or function
 •Two types of depression (jaza’):
•Clear cause or antecedent (stressor has
occurred which has caused the person to
feel like this)
Endogenous • Reactive depression
& Reactive •One with no apparent cause, due to an
Depression impurity of the blood and/or an
imbalance of the humors
• “Endogenous depression”, or non-
neurological imbalance based in the
body (ex. hypothyroidism)
 •Logic to wedge between action/event and feeling
•Don’t expect permanence from a temporal world
•Negative reaction to a neg. event is worse than
the neg. event itself
Principles and •Create a narrative of oneself: Courageous heroes
endure with patience in face of misfortune
Strategies to • Narrative Therapy

Change •Soul/psyche (nafs) is most important thing, worthy

of one’s utmost attention (self-care and

Negative
prioritizing)
•“It could have been worse”—I still have my soul
Cognition • Gratitude trumps despair
•Past sorrows have gone, present sorrow will pass
•“Opposite therapy” – think opposite thoughts
(reframing)
 •Primary treatment for endogenous
depression is medication
• Treatments based on the Humoral Theory
as well as food, drink, physical activity
• Supplemented with supportive
psychotherapy
Dealing with •Reactive depression on the other hand
Endogenous requires particular forms of “psychotherapy”.

& Reactive •Al-Balkhi gives a number of different types

that we today would recognize as:
Depression • Cognitive behavioral therapy
• Music therapy
• Rational emotive therapy
• Reciprocal inhibition
• Interpersonal therapy
 • External advice is more beneficial than one’s own internal therapeutic
treatments
• We have maladaptive tendencies to repeat problematic cycles of behavior

• Distinguishes between Internal and External therapeutic methods

• Internal: Steps that an individual can implement his/herself
• External: Steps that are needed to be done for you by a practitioner
• In mental distress we lose sense of perspective and insight, so al-Balkhi
points out that often people do not recognize how unwell. A person in

Necessity of
throes of depression may appear to act like a mad person (i.e. psychotic
depression)
• Someone must be able to intervene to prevent conditions from

Having a
deteriorating (crisis assessment and intervention)
• Critical to understand is that there is a person underneath, and to bring
that person back (supportive psychotherapy)

Counselor • There should be a pre-existing relationship or acknowledgment that the

individual is an expert (we accept from others what we reject from
ourselves)
• The counselor should not be a family member, but someone who is
wise, respectable, an expert who has had dealings with such situations
in the past, an individual of trust.

• i.e., al-Balkhi is outlining the attributes of a therapeutic relationship

• Warns about becoming dependent on counsel
• Must work towards functioning independently: access expert opinions and advice
for treatments but not becoming dependent on them
 •Second chapter of the work is about maintaining overall
psychological wellbeing through proactive behavior
•States that everyone will suffer mental distress in life in
one form or another
• People differ in the severity of their symptoms
•This can have to do with one’s temperament;
upbringing may make an individual vulnerable to
experiencing a major episode

Mental •Certain actions that every individual should take to

preserve their mental wellness, to ward off a mental
Hygiene health crisis, or to bring immediate relief to you in the
midst of a mental health crisis:
• Encourages preventative approach by “banking” positive
cognitions
• Can not conjure up positive cognitions when in the midst of
a mental health crisis, so keep a bank of such cognitions
when everything is calm, balanced in life
• When you then have a negative cognition that may trigger a
mental health problem you can immediately and
instinctively combat it with a positive cognition
 • Al-Balkhi’s manner of approaching mental distress is like a
physician, focusing on symptoms, models, treatments, etc., but he
mentions spiritual aspects of these conditions as well
• Hope is the bedrock of successful therapy and mental health
• Important for individual to internalize and for the therapist to
reinforce that although things are bad in the moment, we are not
meant for this world
• Focus on eternal perspective

• Criticizes internalizing a pathological spirituality: “Bad things are

happening because God is angry with me and hates me.”
Hope vs. • tranquil soul (nafs mutma'inna) vs. the struggling, self-accusing soul (nafs
lawwama)

Pathological • someone who internalizes external trauma, grief, and sadness

starts to accuse themselves (lawwama), becoming their own abuser

Spirituality • Counter this with focus on purpose in life, a lens of eternity, and
perspective: Why did the same thing happen to the Prophet
Muhammad, who was sinless?
• Cognitively reframe what is happening to you as a test as a trial.
• Example of the aforementioned hadith when the Prophet
Muhammad’s son died.
• Prophetic response was not to negate feelings and only focus
on the hereafter, but to feel and validate the emotions, yet put
them into context
• Hadith: “Verily, God does not punish His beloveds, but He
may try them in this world.”
References

al-Balkhi, Abu Zayd. Abū Zayd Al-Balkhī''s Sustenance of the Soul: The
Cognitive Behavior Therapy of a Ninth Century Physician. Translated by Malik
Badrii. London: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2013.

Turner, Mahshid. “Medieval Muslim ‘Cognitive Behaviour Therapists’ Al-Kindi

and Al-Balkhi.” Spirituality, Theology & Health. Lecture, May 5, 2016.
https://youtu.be/wY734nb21ik.

Yusuf, Asim. “Approaches to Depression and Anxiety in Classical Islam: From

Abu Zayd to Abu Hamid.” Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK: Public
Seminar Series 2018. Lecture, May 1, 2018. https://youtu.be/E2XfcylTfNs.