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Abstract
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The Arabic word 'ḥijāma' is often translated into English as 'cupping'. This translation though, is not entirely accurate as it gives the impression that ḥijāma encompasses all forms of cupping therapy. Islamically, ḥijāma is usually explicit to one form of cupping therapy, which is 'blood cupping', also known as 'wet cupping'. Although similar to dry cupping whereby cups are placed on the surface of the skin, sucking the air out, and creating a vacuum to regulate the flow of blood and to stimulate life-energy, blood-cupping goes one step further, with the practitioner making small incisions on the surface of the skin in order to rid the patient of blood stasis within the body.
This ancient remedy has deep historical roots in Chinese civilization and has been an integral part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for centuries. The earliest records of cupping in China are found in Bo Shu [4], a book written on silk, discovered in an ancient tomb of the Han Dynasty. A popular saying in China tells us: "Acupuncture and cupping, more than half of the ills cured" [5]. The different forms of cupping therapy applied today as part of TCM include 'dry cupping', 'needle cupping', 'moving cupping' (tui guan fa), 'moxa cupping' (ai guan fa), 'herbal cupping' (yao guan fa), 'water cupping' (shui guan fa), and 'blood cupping' (xue guan fa) [6], the latter being the focus of this paper.
Popular treatment of ailments and illnesses based on the Qur'ān and the Sunna of the Prophet Muḥammad continue to be practised in the Muslim world owing to their religious inspiration. It is not uncommon to find shops dedicated to selling different types of honey because the Qur'ān specifies that "in it is healing for mankind" [1], or for customers to purchase black seed oil on the basis of the ḥadīth that "it is a cure for everything but death" [2,3]. The belief of being possessed by a jinn, often as a result of black magic still prevails, especially for those whose ailments conventional medicine has fallen short of curing. Healers who recite the Qur'ān are often consulted to remove the jinn and annul any spells that may have been cast. In the context of the Qur'ānic and prophetic remedies that exist, taking into consideration the growing interest in complementary medicine, ḥijāma too has gained its fair share of attention as a credible religiously-rooted form of therapy for a wide range of diseases. |