Ibn al-Tilmīdh’s <span class='italic'>Book on Simple Drugs</span>

doi:10.1017/9781009389792.002

Chapter 1 - Ibn al-Tilmīdh’s Book on Simple Drugs

A Christian Physician from Baghdad on the Arabic, Greek, Syriac, and Persian Nomenclature of Plants and Minerals

from Part I - Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2023

Fabian Käs

Edited by

Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and

Dionysios Stathakopoulos

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Petros Bouras-Vallianatos: Affiliation:
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Dionysios Stathakopoulos: Affiliation:
University of Cyprus

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Summary

Amīn al-Dawla Ibn al-Tilmīdh (d. 1165) was born in Baghdad into a family of Christian physicians. He served several Abbasid caliphs, who entrusted him with high-ranking positions, such as that of ‘head of physicians’ of his hometown. He wrote about twenty books and treatises, including a renowned dispensatory. In this chapter I examine Ibn al-Tilmīdh’s little-known work on simple drugs, the Kitāb quwā l-adwiyah (Book on the Faculties of Simple Drugs). The text consists of 287 entries on medicinal plants, minerals, and a few animal products. Each entry is divided into five sections, dedicated respectively to synonyms, descriptions, ‘faculties’, benefits of the simple drug, and its use in compound remedies. The most interesting of these sections is the first, as Ibn al-Tilmīdh not only gave the usual Arabic names of plants and minerals and their synonyms there, but also regularly listed the Syriac, Persian, and Greek names of the drugs.

Keywords

Ibn al-Tilmīdh medieval pharmacology medieval medicine materia medica Christian Arabs Greco-Arabic studies Syriac lexicology

Type: Chapter
Information: Drugs in the Medieval Mediterranean
Transmission and Circulation of Pharmacological Knowledge
, pp. 37 - 57

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009389792.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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Chapter 1 - Ibn al-Tilmīdh’s Book on Simple Drugs

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