Ibn Baklarish's Book of Simples: Medical Remedies Between Three Faiths in Twelth-Century Spain
Arcadian Library, September 2008. Hardcover with Dust Jacket. 163pp. + Color facsimile plates on black paper. Very clean, sharp copy in like DJ. 'This book focuses on the most important manuscript of a medical work written in Arabic by an early twelfth-century Jewish physician in Spain. Ibn Baklarish's work, called the Kitab al-Musta' ini in honour of its dedicatee, al-Musta' in bi-llah Abu Ja'far Ahmad (ruler of Saragossa 1085-1110), sets out in tabular form the properties and uses, and alternative names in several languages, of over 700 medicinal substances, drawing on a wide range of Greek and Arabic authorities and on local knowledge. The recently acquired manuscript belonging to the Arcadian library, written in 1130 A.D., is the earliest surviving witness to the text, and provides unique information about the state of medicine in medieval Spain at the time. The book, introduced and edited by Charles Burnett, contains eight papers by an international team of experts on the history of scholarship on the Kitab al-Musta inT, the Arabic text of the work in the Arcadian Library manuscript, the abundant Latin and Romance synonyms and glosses (which attest to the Iberian readership of the text), the Syriac synonyms (which attest to Ibn Baklarish's use of sources from the Middle East), the use of animal parts as medicines, the Jewish culture of Ibn Baklarish, other significant manuscripts of the text, and the text's relationship to other medical texts in tabular format.'. FINE / FINE. Item #506672
ISBN: 0199543062
Price: $125.00