The Medical Formulary of Al-­Samarqandi demonstrates the high development of pharmacology by the Arabs in the Middle Ages. It was far from a dark period in science for it was in this area, as well as in Arabic optics and chemistry, that experimental science first began to develop. This is shown by al-Samarqandi's work which describes many new drugs, chemical processes, and a more advanced pharmacological theory. No part of this work has ever before been brought to the notice of historians of medicine. For the first time, the authors give a complete translation of this Aqrâbōdhīn in order to present a complete picture of the pharmacological knowledge of the day. There is a comprehensive section of Notes and Comments with particular attention being drawn to the present-day usage of old Arabic drugs, the employment of the drugs in the much earlier al-Kindi Medical Formulary, and to the etymological discussion of Arabic plant names not studied in previous works on the subject. Finally there is a Glossary of Arabic-English terms and a selected Bibliography.

An online, Open Access version of this work is also available from Brill. A Literary History of Medicine by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270) is the earliest comprehensive history of medicine. It contains biographies of over 432 physicians, ranging from the ancient Greeks to the author’s contemporaries, describing their training and practice, often as court physicians, and listing their medical works; all this interlaced with poems and anecdotes. These volumes present the first complete and annotated translation along with a new edition of the Arabic text showing the stages in which the author composed the work. Introductory essays provide important background. The reader will find on these pages an Islamic society that worked closely with Christians and Jews, deeply committed to advancing knowledge and applying it to health and wellbeing.

This is the first detailed analysis of an immensely popular 13th c. Arabic guide for pharmacists, from a time in which Jewish physicians and pharmacists worked alongside Muslim and Christian practioners. "Minh j al-dukk n" ("How to manage a pharmacy"), by Ab l-Mun al-K h n al- A r (fl. 1260) is the first attempt to explore the full spectrum of pharmacy in the medieval Arabic world: identification of the materia medica and methods of preparation; pharmacy's place within the sciences and particularly its relationship with medicine; the social position of the pharmacist and his role in the marketplace and the hospital; the economics of pharmacy; legal aspects of pharmacy; and the image of the pharmacist in literature and drama. The result is a full and nuanced picture of a section of society usually invisible.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The subject of this two-volume publication is an inventory of manuscripts in the book treasury of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, commissioned by the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II from his royal librarian ʿAtufi in the year 908 (1502–3) and transcribed in a clean copy in 909 (1503–4). This unicum inventory preserved in the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára Keleti Gyűjtemény, MS Török F. 59) records over 5,000 volumes, and more than 7,000 titles, on virtually every branch of human erudition at the time. The Ottoman palace library housed an unmatched encyclopedic collection of learning and literature; hence, the publication of this unique inventory opens a larger conversation about Ottoman and Islamic intellectual/cultural history. The very creation of such a systematically ordered inventory of books raises broad questions about knowledge production and practices of collecting, readership, librarianship, and the arts of the book at the dawn of the sixteenth century. The first volume contains twenty-eight interpretative essays on this fascinating document, authored by a team of scholars from diverse disciplines, including Islamic and Ottoman history, history of science, arts of the book and codicology, agriculture, medicine, astrology, astronomy, occultism, mathematics, philosophy, theology, law, mysticism, political thought, ethics, literature (Arabic, Persian, Turkish/Turkic), philology, and epistolary. Following the first three essays by the editors on implications of the library inventory as a whole, the other essays focus on particular fields of knowledge under which books are catalogued in MS Török F. 59, each accompanied by annotated lists of entries. The second volume presents a transliteration of the Arabic manuscript, which also features an Ottoman Turkish preface on method, together with a reduced-scale facsimile.

The manuscripts of the Cairo Genizah are a unique source for medieval medical history. In Medical Prescriptions in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, Lev and Chipman offer an insight into the everyday practical medicine of medieval Egypt, which reflects medical practice in the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole, by analysing thirty selected prescriptions from the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection (Cambridge University Library). The prescriptions, which are in Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic, are transcribed and translated, with accompanying commentaries, photographs and glossaries. Introductory chapters discuss the theoretical background of the prescriptions and the practical medicine of the Cairo Genizah, while the conclusion considers their significance for the study of the medieval medical tradition.

This book - now available in paperback - was originally written in the early 11th century by Abu al-Faraj 'Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Hindu (d. 423/1032), a physician who was also the author of a treatise on philosophy, and who was famous for his Arabic poetry (his anthology is said to have amounted to 15,000 couplets or more). For a medieval work, which was written as an introduction to medicine intended for students, the book is refreshingly meticulous in its analysis and is modern in its outlook. It discusses the various disciplines that a medical student should have been familiar with, including a lengthy digression into philosophy and logic. It then deals with matters specifically medical, devoting separate sections to anatomy, diseases, pulse, and names of medicinal substances.