Lesson 4 of 6 · The whisper has a name
Somebody wrote this down in the ninth century
This is not a modern problem with an old label stuck on afterwards. Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, writing in the ninth century, described al-waswasah in a way a clinician today would recognise straight away. Thoughts that intrude and will not leave, and the repeated acts done to answer them.
He treated it as something to be helped. Not as a sin, and not as a shortage of faith.
What the research says
A reading of al-Balkhi's own manuscript, which describes obsessional states and sets out how to help them. That this was described and treated as something to be helped, rather than as a fault, is in the text and not a flourish added later.
A reading of al-Balkhi's own text, which describes obsessional states and sets out an approach to treating them. The claim that he described this and treated it as something to be helped is not a flourish. It is in the manuscript.
Awaad R, Ali S (2015). Obsessional disorders in al-Balkhi's 9th century treatise: Sustenance of the Body and Soul. Journal of Affective Disorders, 180, 185 to 189 doi
Al-Balkhi identified waswasah with what we would now call obsessions and compulsions, and treated it as a condition to be helped rather than a moral failing, roughly a thousand years before the modern category existed. You are not the first person to be here.
Al-Balkhi identified al-waswasah with what would now be called obsessions and compulsions, and set it out as a condition to be treated rather than a moral failing, roughly a thousand years before the modern category existed.
Saeed SI, Ahmed JO, Kakamad K, Najmadden Z (2024). Abu Zayd Ahmed ibn Sahl Al-Balkhi (850 to 934): a pioneer in the field of psychotherapy and mental health. Cureus, 16(8), e67998 doi