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The Nizamia Tibbi College, formally established at Hyderabad in 1894 under Asaf Jahi patronage, gave the older Unani medical tradition of the Deccan a modern institutional form. Unani — "the Ionian" — was the Greco-Arabic system of humoral medicine developed in the Islamic world from the works of Hippocrates and Galen, brought into India by the Delhi Sultans and patronised throughout the Deccan since the Bahmani period. The Nizamia Tibbi College gathered the lineages of the great Deccan hakim families into a single teaching institution with a fixed syllabus, examinations and a teaching hospital, and remains one of the principal Unani medical schools of South Asia.
The tradition
The Unani lineages of the Asafi Deccan
Unani medicine in the Deccan ran in family lineages of hakims attached to the Asafi court — the most distinguished being the Hakim Ajmal Khan circle of Delhi, with which the Hyderabad establishment kept close ties. The seventh Nizam in particular took a personal interest in Unani and endowed the college with an extensive teaching hospital.
The school
Classical Unani texts joined to modern medical science
The college's syllabus combines the classical Unani texts — Ibn Sina's Qanun, the Sharh al-Asbab of Nafis, the works of Razi and others — with modern anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. Students sit four-year and postgraduate examinations, train in the attached hospital, and qualify as registered Unani physicians.
Continuing role
A principal teaching institution of the Unani system
Now the Government Nizamia Tibbi College, it functions under the central Indian framework for traditional medicine and remains a principal teaching institution of the Unani system. Its library and pharmacy preserve some of the most important Unani materials in India.