Download PDF | Efraim Lev, Zohar Amar - Practical materia medica of the medieval eastern Mediterranean according to the Cairo Genizah - Sir Henry Welcome Asian Series Volume 7-BRILL (2008).
664 Pages
PREFACE
There is much information on Eastern medieval medical practices and the use of medicinal substances, which is based mainly upon the wide literature written in this field. This body of literature deals with a wide variety of subjects, from general works on medical doctrines and theories, codes of maintaining health, treating different diseases to the preparation of medication and more.
The vast majority of these books was written by learned and usually well trained, educated and known physicians in concrete and well organized forms, and were meant to be practical and theoretical teaching tools as well as reference books for practitioners.
In these works, the optimal medicinal substances were mentioned, out of an enormous inventory from all over the Old World, as ingredients in the proposed medicines. However, it seems that so far there has been no wide and deep examination, which tries to assess how much of this body of data regarding the medicinal substances was really used.
The goal of our study is to try to bridge the gap between the theoretical and the practical information, as well as comparing uses of medicinal substances according to the vast documentation dealing with medicine in the Cairo Genizah. We strongly believe that the large number of fragments dealing with medical issues, which are mainly related to the Jewish community of medieval Cairo, truly reflect the wide field of medicine in most of the eastern communities in particular and the Mediterranean society in general.
The Genizah supplies us with reliable, direct and authentic information on the diseases from which the members of the community suffered, allows us to reconstruct the inventory of medicinal substances which were sold in the pharmacies and moreover, to determine the frequencies of their uses in prescriptions and their usefulness. Doing this, our study contributes much to the knowledge regarding the medieval daily life, the material culture, economy and trade among these communities.
This book is the outcome of five intensive years of research (based on a decade of study of the medicine and the materia medica of the Levant), which includes the sorting of thousands of manuscripts and examining hundreds of original fragments, most of which are found at the “Genizah capital”—the Taylor-Schechter Collection at Cambridge University Library. It is our pleasure to thank Prof. Stefan Reif, the former director of the Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library for his friendly attitude, encouragement and support. We also would like to express our gratitude to his team: Dr. Avihai Shivtiel, Dr. Fredrich Niessen, Dr. Ben Outhwaite, Dr. Rebecca Jefferson, Ellis Weinberger, Dr. Leigh Chipman, Shulie Reif and Sara Sykes. We would like to express our respect for the late Dr. Haskell Isaacs, who paved the road for the research of the history of medicine in the Cairo Genizah, and his wife Ruth for her support.
This book would have not come to light without the support of the following institutions: St. John’s College, Cambridge, England for their support and hospitality during years of research; Research Authority, University of Haifa, Israel for their financial support. A generous gift from the Kohn Foundation, made possible by the kindness of Dr. Ralph and Mrs Zahava Kohn, contributed towards the preparation of the research in this volume.
Many thanks to Dr. Yaron Serri for editing the Arabic terms, the Ben Zimra family, Ramat-Gan, Israel for their warm hospitality to the authors while meeting and writing this book and to Tirza and Norman Bleehen, Cambridge, for letting Dr. Lev house-sit more than actually necessary.
This book is dedicated to our families, this time mainly to our children: Hagar, Amitay, Avigail and Ilay Lev, and Shaked, Yadin, Zur, Mevaseret, Matania, and Avigail Amar and to our spouses Michal Lev and Tamar Amar.
Efraim Lev Zohar Amar Zichron Yaakov Neve Tsuf 2007
INTRODUCTION
The Genizah and its different collections
A thousand years ago, one of the most important centres of Jewry the world over, and particularly in the East, was the community of Old Cairo (Fustat). This community had close connections with the Jewish communities of Babylon, Palestine, Spain, Sicily, North African (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia), Spain, India, Yemen, and others. The Fustat community was a centre of considerable social, economic, and religious activity. The Palestinian Jews of Fustat worshipped in the Ben Ezra synagogue and it was one of the rooms in their synagogue which was utilized as a “Genizah’, or depository, from about the tenth to the nineteenth century. In accordance with Jewish religious practice, sacred books which were no longer to be used were not idly discarded, but were committed to such a Genizah or buried.
The community in Fustat made full use of the first option and deposited not only sacred works such as the Bible and rabbinic literature and liturgies, but also sectarian literature, palimpsests, responsa, poetry, and documents of all kinds. In fact, almost every written piece that passed through its members hands, on vellum or paper, printed or manuscript, early or late, scholarly research or children’s reading exercises, was consigned to the Genizah. The extraordinary circumstance of its preservation for this long period against the ravages of time and decay was due to the exceptionally dry climate of Egypt.
The existence of the Cairo Genizah was known to European scholars. Some even visited it, but superstitious tales prevented them from touching or removing any fragment. By the nineteenth century the “spell was broken” and manuscripts were bought from the synagogue officials and guards. The fragments slowly reached the hands of collectors and came to the attention of scholars in Russia, America, and Europe. Soon after that different academic institutes and libraries purchased manuscripts and assembled their own collections.'
The main collections are as follows: Cambridge University Library (150,000 items), Manchester, John Rylands University Library (10,000, mostly small scraps), Leningrad, Saltykov-Schedrin Public Library (1,200 and thousands in the Firkovich collection), Oxford, Bodleian Library (5,000), London, British Library (5,000), Cambridge, Mosseri family collection (4,000), Paris, Alliance Israélite Universelle (3,500), Cambridge, Westminster College (2,000), Strasbourg, Bibliotheque nationale et universitaire (1,000), Budapest, Academy of Science (650), Philadelphia, Annenberg Research Institute (400), Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library (300), Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College (250), Vienna (150), and Washington, Birmingham, Frankfort, Berlin, and a few private collections (less than 50 each).’
The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library owes its existence to Dr. Solomon Schechter (1847-1915) and Dr. Charles Taylor (1881-1908). They were responsible for recovering the majority of Genizah manuscripts from Cairo in 1896. The collection was offered to the Cambridge University Library Syndicate with certain conditions in 1898.
This collection is known as the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection (T-S for short). Other smaller collections of Genizah manuscripts had been purchased or come into the possession of the Library before Schechter’s hoard. In 1973 the Genizah Research Unit was established, and since then it has conducted numerous research projects.
History of research
The Genizahs many collections have been studied ever since it was discovered by Western scholars,’ individual fragments have been published, catalogues written, and much research focusing on a wide variety of matters has yielded a wealth of articles and books.
Among the main fields that have been studied are various religious and biblical subjects, Jewish law, education, poetry, social life, trade, communal organization, and so on. The importance of the Genizah for the research of the medieval Mediterranean communities, supplying information on almost every aspect of life, is demonstrated by Goitein,° Gil,° Ben-Sasson’ and others.
Medical issues in the Genizah have been researched only as part of other subjects such as the different professional classes of the Jewish community in Old Cairo. A number of scholars have dealt with this subject-matter, such as Goitein,® Baker,’ Fenton,'° Dietrich,'' Cohen,” Dvorgetsky,’’ and especially Isaacs.'*
On the importance and the potential of research into the medical aspects of the Genizah documents Goitein wrote in 1963: “Only a special study can do justice to this subject”;’® in 1967 he reiterated, “With regard to...medical and culinary plants, there is enough material for a Ph.D. dissertation on each’, and added in 1971 that “these prescriptions have to be examined by experts in the history of medicine”.'* Fenton in 1980 underlined the same need for focused research: the Genizah fragments, “although of considerable interest for the history of medicine, have received relatively little attention”.'’ One early study on medicinal materials in Muslim Egypt was conducted by Dietrich and published in 1954; this scholarly work was based on one manuscript replete with information on trade in medicinal substances.'* A few works have been published since, usually focusing on one subject, or even important single manuscripts which were studied in detail,’ for example, by Baker” and by Isaacs.”
In addition, the medical profession has been studied in works on the Genizah in general, and on the life of the Jewish communities and societies in the Mediterranean.” Medicine as a foremost subject in the Genizah has been given due attention only in the last few years, with the publication of a catalogue of medical and para-medical manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collection by Isaacs and Baker.” Short descriptions are given of 1616 fragments, about one quarter of which concern materia medica. However, the book hardly discusses or analyses the evidence. The compilers close their introduction to the catalogue as follows: “Much more could be said of the Genizah medical material, but enough basic information has been provided to encourage future scholars with an interest in such matters to pursue further investigation”.*
Recent catalogues” and further research on the T-S collection have provided information on more than 150 fragments referring to medicine in general and materia medica in particular. We hope this vital information will soon be published.”
In keeping with the above, this book attempts to contribute to the following categories: rearrangement and a fresh classification of the medical fragments, more precise identification of the materia medica, as well as reconstruction of the inventory of practical materia medica in medieval Cairo. These matters will paint a better picture and provide a wider perspective of the practical daily medicine of the Genizah people.
Our research project is based mainly on the T-S Genizah collection at Cambridge. All other collections are much smaller and some have not yet been catalogued. To date, no specialist catalogue of medical materials in the other Genizah collections has been published. A survey of the collections at the British Library, at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem shows that these contain very few Genizah fragments relating to medicine, in most cases parts of books.”
‘The field of medicine according to the Genizah
In their work, Isaacs and Baker classified the medical materials found in the Genizah into five categories,”** four of which contain information about materia medica:
a. Fragments referring to medicine proper, including treatment.
b. Descriptions of simple drugs, methods of preparing potions, pills, ointments etc., pharmacopoeias and the art of pharmacy.
c. Household remedies.
d. Quasi-medical subjects.
This classification is sound, and is followed in this book. Isaacs and Baker’s catalogue and the works by Goitein and Gil provided the inspiration for this present excursion into the world of medical and pharmaceutical data found in the wealth of Genizah manuscripts.
The literature on medicine in medieval Muslim countries in general” and in Egypt particularly is vast and detailed.*° In this work we concentrate on the contribution of the Genizah fragments to research in the field of medicine and its different aspects, mainly the practical uses of materia medica.
Medicine and medical practitioners in the Medieval Middle East
Physicians
Many medieval Egyptian Jews chose the medical profession for a wide range of reasons. That a large number of Jews engaged in the medical profession in Egypt and other Muslim territories emerges from other historical sources as well, mainly the books by medieval biographers and historians of medicine such as Ibn Abi Usaybi'a.*! This writer mentions more than fifteen Jewish practitioners he met or knew of in Cairo in his time and before.
So far, sifting through Genizah fragments as part of an ongoing longterm project* has yielded the names of more than fifty physicians. Of several explanations for this phenomenon, Goitein’s is still convincing and relevant, based as it is on his deep knowledge and understanding of medieval Mediterranean society, particularly its Jewish sector.
Goitein explains the phenomenon of Jewish predominance in medicine not as the continuation of the pre-Islamic tradition but as a contemporary development owing to the revival of the Greek sciences in Islam on the one hand and the efflorescence of trade with India and the Far East on the other. In his opinion medicine and pharmaceutics then experienced unprecedented exuberance and became almost new professions.*?
Most of the fifty Jewish physicians found to date in the fragments lived and practised medicine in Cairo, with a few in Alexandria and several small cities in Egypt, between the 11th and the 13th century. Their titles (all signifying ‘doctor’), according to the Genizah fragments, were al-mutatabbib (e.g., ‘Isa b. ‘Ali al-Mutatabbib;* “Abdallah Yaftth b. Yusuf al-Isra‘ili al-Mutatabbib),* al-tabib (e.g., Abt al-‘Ala’ b. Yusuf al-Tabib;** Haran b. Sa‘adya al-Tabib),*’ ha-rofe (e.g., Shlomo ha-Zaken ha-Rofe;** Aaron ben Yeshu‘a ha-Rofeh),” and al-hakim (e.g., Abt Ya‘qub al-Hakim).”°
In few cases titles reflect other communal positions the physician held, such as head of community: nagid (e.g., Abt al-Fadl Mevorach b. Sa‘adya;*! Judah Mevorakh b. Sa‘adya (Abt Zikri));*” prominence in the community: parnas (e.g., Yosef ha-Parnas ha-Rofe);* or physician and judge (e.g., Aaron b. Yeshu’a Ibn al--Ammani ha-Rofe;“* Moses b.
Maimon— Maimonides). Maimonides was called also ra‘is al-yahad, which according to Goitein means official leader of the Jews.*°
For some of them we even have information on their specialization: eye doctors (e.g., Makarim b. Ishaq b. Makarim),”” a wound specialist (Abd al-Faraj b. al-Kallam),** and a physician who worked in a hospital (Sulayman b. Mtsa).”
As noted, most of the physicians worked privately in Cairo” or Alexandria (Abtal-Futth,*! Aharon b. Sedaqab. Aaron ha-Rofe al-’ Ammani,” Ben Sadaqa),”’ others pursued their career in small villages, some practised in hospitals (Abraham b. Moses b. Maimon)*° and a select few in rulers’ courts (Moses b. Maimon; al-Shaykh al-Muwaffaq Ibn Jumay’).*°
The Genizah records constitute historical evidence supporting Maimonides’ account of the great number of physicians in Cairo in two instances: one where he criticizes the number of physicians who were treating one patient: “in some cases a patient was healed of one ailment by ten physicians”.*”
In addition, the Genizah fragments have increased our knowledge of Jewish physicians practising in the Levant and their status.
Several ways to acquire medical experience or to become a physician
In the medieval Muslim world several ways were available to one wishing to learn medicine and become a physician, and to gain practical medical experience.” Two of these means have been gleaned from biographies and some letters found in the Genizah:
1. Apprenticeship to a physician of repute.® Evidence of this course®! being chosen by Maimonides is discussed in detail by Kraemer.”
2. Work in a hospital to improve learners’ medical knowledge and enhance their careers. However, taking this option was fairly difficult as we learn from several letters. The young candidate had to obtain a letter of recommendation from a person of authority and social standing such as a governor or judge, and a certificate of good character from the local chief of police. Hospital work was of course easily accessible to prominent doctors.®
Some physicians prepared their own compounds and took certain stock remedies with them on their visits. A well-preserved fragment™ that seems to be an inventory gives an idea of the objects carried. The list contains several instruments such as a mortar, scale, and glasses, indicating that the doctor or an assistant prepared the medicaments himself. Goitein states that despite its close connection with the art of medicine, the profession of pharmacist was strictly separated from it, at least according to the testimony of the Genizah.®
Medical Institutions
Much evidence of service by Jewish practitioners in “government” hospitals, mainly those built by Muslim rulers, is found in the Genizah fragments as well as in medieval Arabic sources. Goitein maintains that Jewish patients are never mentioned in the Genizah documents as making use of them.” The Jewish physicians were among the best and most prominent in the community,® such as Abraham Maimonides and Abt Sa‘d.” Working in the hospitals enabled talented young physicians to complete their medical education and receive their licenses.” The standard monthly salary of a physician in the hospital of Cairo in 1240 was three dinars.’!
Practising in the hospital was hard work, from early morning until about noontime, when the physicians could go and attend their private practice.” The physicians’ duties at the hospitals included night shifts.” However, so far no historical evidence of the existence of a Jewish hospital in medieval Cairo has been found, or, as intimated, any reference to Jewish patients making any use of Muslim “government” hospitals.” We believe that this was due to Halachic issues, most probably the dietary laws and qualms about the religious purity of the medicines at an institution that operated under Muslim authorities. Members of the Jewish community were treated by private Jewish practitioners as needed. The “government” hospitals had different wards, for, say, eye diseases, operations, and intestinal ailments.”
Health, hygiene and diseases
Health was an important and fundamental issue in the past as it is today—perhaps even more. It is no wonder that illness and diseases feature frequently in Genizah fragments.”* Infectious diseases and epidemics prevailed mainly at times of war and famine,” for example, smallpox.”
Hygiene and regimen sanitatis
The main response to the challenge of personal hygiene were the bathhouses: belief in the hygienic power of the sweat bath is demonstrated throughout the centuries by personal reports. Several Genizah fragments testify to the extensive use by medieval men as well as women of the bathhouses, and how important this institution was in their lives. One Cairo bathhouse was actually owned by a Jew.”
As part of preventive medicine (regimen sanitatis) bloodletting was a regular activity (Friday was the preferred day), as well as anointing the body with oils and washing hands regularly. Some other preventive activities, such applying kohl to the eyes (against eye diseases) and the use of tooth powder (saniin) for oral hygiene, are recorded as well.*°
Fees
Fees varied according to the physician's professional standing and the socio-economic status of the patient. A few fragments shed light on this subject; for example, a physician was paid three dirhams weekly for treating a sore eye.®' Rich people and rulers gave much more to their doctors, while patients with chronic disabilities and the handicapped were exempt from paying any fee.
Pharmacy
Pharmacy was the most popular of all branches of the healing art, according to the Genizah manuscripts. Goitein writes: “One need not delve deeply into the writings of the Cairo Genizah in order to discover that a great many of them refer to the professions connected with the processing and sale of drugs, spices, perfumes and potions for medical and culinary uses”.*’ Elsewhere he states, “The prominence of the Jews in the professions of druggist and pharmacists during the High Middle Ages—which is paralleled by their equally strong representation in the fields of medicine on the one hand, and in that of the international trade in spices and drugs on the other—calls for comment”. He explains the phenomenon not as the continuation of a pre-Islamic tradition, but as a law of economic history, still in effect today, that minority groups have a chance of being successful in occupations not yet monopolized by the more privileged classes of the society. A subsidiary element might have been the fact that the pharmacist’s profession was a bookish one.* The use of hand-books, classical materia medica, and medicine books such as that of Dioscorides was an important part of the work. The Jewish religion too, as it developed in post-Talmudic times, had become very scholarly.
Pharmacists
Saydalani (e.g., al-Israili al-Saydalani)® or saydali is usually translated as pharmacist or apothecary. The latter occupation belongs to the same group, and there were specialists such as the sufufi or preparer of medical powders.*’ The word saydalani is traditionally explained as dealer in sandalwood (Santalum sp.), so saydalani, like ‘attar, originally designated a perfumer.** The pharmacists were trained to collect and preserve the various medicaments brought from near or far-off lands.”
Perfumers and Druggists
The occupation of ‘attdr, usually translated as perfumer or druggist, is among those occurring most commonly in the Genizah.” Evidence of the popularity and the existence of the druggist calling can be found in a list of contributors (dated around 1095), in which four out of ten people whose occupations are noted are described as druggists. In a list of donors to a wheat collection for the poor in summer 1178, two ‘attars belonged to the upper class of contributors, two to the middle, and three to the lower.”
The ‘attdran usually operated in a special section in the market named sug al-‘attarin;* the equivalent murabba‘at al-‘attdrin is mentioned as well.” In another fragment the term appears as the last name, for example, Ishaq al-yahtdi al-‘attar,** Abt Ishaq Abraham b. Sahlan al-‘Attar,® and Abd al-Hasan b. Masa al-fasid al-‘Attar.*°
Potion Makers and Sellers
The sharabi, usually translated as one who prepares or sells potions, is another occupation frequently occurring in the Genizah—also sometimes as a last name (e.g., Ibn al-Sharabi).” The tabbakh sharab, cooker of potions, presumably produced sharabs wholesale and supplied them to sharabi retailers. In some fragments physicians practising in a sharabi's shop are mentioned,” but, it is the physician, not the sharabi, who was responsible for the prescriptions.”
Traders and trade of drugs
Egypt was a centre of intensive commercial activity, peopled by big merchants, small traders, various middlemen, and others. The trade in medicinal substances from India, Persia, the Levant, North Africa, and other countries was only a fraction of this multifaceted activity, which included spices, textiles, tools, and so on. Much information on this medieval aspect of mercantile activity can be gathered from documents published by scholars such as Goitein,'® Gil,'”' Ben-Sasson,'” Dietrich,'” and Stillman.'™ Part B, chapter 5, presents some diagrams showing the role of pharmacists and doctors in the business of trading medicinal substances, besides the preparation and sale of such drugs.'”
Drug sellers, the muhtasib, and the Market Police
Very often patients bought their medicines from a drug seller. This roving herbalist probably relied for his sales not on a doctor but on his own diagnoses and suggested method of treatment, or on his clients’ prescribing for themselves, that is, their self-medication. The market police were charged with protecting the customer's pocketbook, namely ensuring that expensive materials were not adulterated with cheaper substitutes. The drug sellers were monitored by an official known as al-muhtasib,'°° who was well versed in religious matters and whose duties included inspecting and assaying drugs.'”
Drugstores and Pharmacies
The drugstores served as a landmark in a neighbourhood and often served as an address for a letter; its proprietor was thus usually referred to not by his profession but by his first name, or even a nickname. In a study of economic and legal aspects of commercial and industrial partnerships, Goitein found that drugstores and pharmacies are mentioned in more documents than any other occupation.’* Many were run as partnerships, and sometimes even a single transaction was conducted as a partnership, for example, half a hundredweight of opium.'” Many legal documents and letters relating to pharmacies, drugstores, and perfumers’ shops have been found and studied.'”” The centre of the drug and perfume business in Fustat (Old Cairo) and in Alexandria was the Perfumers’ Square, murabba‘at al-‘attarin, often abbreviated to al-Murabba‘a or al-‘attdrin. There the wholesalers, who often acted as retailers too, had their place. Other shops were scattered in the different markets. Goitein found that a third of the Genizah letters that had a detailed address were directed to Perfumers’ Square. It was second in importance as a social centre only to the synagogues."
Contents of the druggist’s shop
From several legal documents such as wills and partnerships that were studied by Goitein we may get an idea of the contents of the druggist’s shop: a cupboard, in which the medicinal substances were kept, and its base was the most important and most expensive item of furniture; a settee and mats, for the convenience of the customers; scales and weights, of special importance; pots, bottles, flasks, and vessels of different materials, shapes, and colours in which the drugs and the medicaments were kept. Mortars and copper pestles for the preparation of the different medicinal materials; other shop paraphernalia existed and are mentioned in different fragments.'”
Medical literature of the Jewish community of Cairo
Every medical book identified in the past, or that will be identified in the future, in the Genizah, in some way and at some stage of its existence (generally the last one) belonged to a Jewish person, particularly one in the medical profession. Accordingly, extensive research will enable us to reconstruct the bookshelf of the Jewish physicians and pharmacists of Muslim Egypt.
To learn more on the subject a preliminary survey was done. The classifying processes revealed 35 different books that have been identified so far.'!?
In terms of the authors’ identities, of the books already been identified roughly one third were written by classical pagan authorities such as Galen''* and Hippocrates. The absence of Dioscorides’ book is strange and dubious—there is a good chance of finding it in one of the unidentified fragments since it was a basic book for physicians and pharmacists alike. One fragment, however, contains citations from Galen and Dioscorides. It is from a chapter listing names of drugs beginning with the Arabic letters kaf and lam."
One third of the identified books are by Muslim writers such as Avicenna and Rhazes, and the rest are by Jewish physicians such as al-Kuhin al-’Attar'!® and Maimonides, who wrote abridged versions of Galen’s works “On Temperaments” (T-S Ar.21.112) and “On the faculties of foods” (T-S Ar.44.51). The latter is preserved thanks only to the Genizah.'”
Some fragments are copied from well known works. An example is a work by Ibn al-Baytar,''* the Andalusian physician who visited the eastern Mediterranean region and described its materia medica in his writings.'!?
Fragments of several books by Maimonides, such as Commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms’ (Hebrew),'*° Abridgement of ‘Galen's On the faculties of foods’ (Judaeo-Arabic),'”! Treatise on sexual intercourse (JudeoArabic),’” and Book of Poisons,'? have been identified. The books contents are specialized medical aspects (e.g., fevers, eye diseases), regimen sanitatis, pharmacopoeias, glossaries of drug names, and lexica of materia medica.
More than 1360 fragments are clearly parts of medical books in Arabic, Hebrew, and Judaeo- Arabic in the Genizah. Isaacs, who performed a unique professional task in identifying the medical literature in his catalogue, could identify only a few.'“ An ongoing research project headed by E. Lev with the help of L. Chipman aims to identify as many books as possible. Findings will be published as a separate catalogue.
Some examples of parts of medical books that need to be identified (titles and authors) are Lexicon of Materia Medica (Hebrew, 12 pages),'° Sexual medicine (Hebrew, 8 pages),'*° Treatise on fever (Hebrew, 92 pages),'”” and Kitab khalq al-insan (Judaeo-Arabic, 4 pages).'* Various diseases and symptoms are mentioned in the fragments of medical books and notebooks found in the Genizah, and some of the most frequent are set out in table 1.
Medieval pharmacists, like the physicians, were required to be acquainted with the current handbooks of medicaments, such as the famous Dustir al-bimaristani (Hospital Handbook)'” by the Jewish (Karaite) physician Ibn Abi al-Bayan (13th century) which was characterized by his pupil Ibn Abi Usaybi'a as “comprising the compound medicaments generally prepared in the hospitals of Egypt, Syria and Iraq and in the shops of the apothecaries”.’*° Though the book is short the author claims it contains all the medicaments commonly prescribed.
Several parts of this book have been identified among Genizah fragments.’*!
A much bigger book, Minhaj al-dukkan fi al-adwiya al-nafia Iilinsan (The shop guide—or How to run the [apothecary’s] shop),'** was written in 1259-60 by Abt al-Muna al-Kahin al-'Attar. With time, this book became even more popular and was printed in Egypt several times between 1870 and 1940. It served as a guide for traditional drug sellers, and still does so.'** A fragment of this book,'** for example, was recently identified, and a critical edition of its eight pages has been published.’
More books, which were part of the medical library of Jewish physicians and pharmacists, are listed in Genizah fragments relating the sale of a medical library.’*° A unique case, a fragment about books left by a doctor named Abt Sa‘d,'”’ was published earlier, and it too will help us reconstruct the bookshelf of the Jewish doctors.!**
A legal document (a court record: 1143 ap) describing the inventory of the estate of a sharabi containing 200 bound volumes and an unspeci-fied number of loose books, is an example of an extremely large library in those days, when all books were handwritten.'”
Several fragments from Sabur ibn Sahl (d. 255/869), a Nestorian Christian physician and pharmacologist, and author of one of the earliest and most famous Arabic pharmacopoeias known to scholars, were recently identified. The short version (al-Aqrabadhin al-saghir, Dispensatorium parvum) has been edited,'*° and more recently translated into English, by Oliver Kahl, from a sole manuscript.'"' Some fragments from this book have been identified lately and will be published soon.’”
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