This book offers an annotated English translation of one of the earliest dispensatories ever written in the Arabic language, viz. the small version of the Aqrābāḏīn composed by the Nestorian physician Sābūr ibn Sahl (d. 869 CE). The translation is based on the edition of the Arabic text as published in volume 16 of the IPTS series, which in turn is based on the oldest handwritten witness of Arabic pharmacy known so far. The translation is framed by a detailed introductory study of the subject, and by various glossaries which make this important source...

This work offers a critical analysis of the Sanskrit, Syriac and Persian sources in Rhazes' (d. 925 CE) Comprehensive Book (or al-Kitāb al-Ḥāwī), a hugely famous and highly unusual medico-pharmaceutical encyclopedia originally written in Arabic. All text material appears in full Arabic with English translations throughout, whilst the traceable Indian fragments are represented here, for the first time, in both the original Sanskrit and corresponding English translations. The philological core of the book is framed by a detailed introductory study on the transmission of...

The Kitāb Taḥrīm dafn al-aḥyāʾ, the Book on the Prohibition to Bury the Living, written by the Nestorian physician ʿUbaidallāh Ibn Buḫtīšūʿ (d. c. 1060 CE), deals with the causes, signs and treatments of apparent death. Based on a short pseudo-Galenic treatise, whose Greek original is lost, ʿUbaidallāh’s Arabic commentary is a comprehensive and in many ways unique piece of scientific writing that moreover promotes a psychological understanding of physical illness. Oliver Kahl’s present book offers a critical Arabic edition with annotated English translation of...

The Arabic treatise edited and translated here was written in the middle of the 9th century CE by ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabban aṭ-Ṭabarī, a Christian convert to Islam and one of the most remarkable thinkers of his time. The text can be described as a manual towards the preservation of health, addressed directly to the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mutawakkil and his household. It represents not only the oldest extant specimen of its kind, but is also distinguished by its largely non-technical language, as well as by a narrative style that creates an unusual interface with classical Arabic prose...