Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
In the course of studying all surviving copies of Arabic Dioscorides manuscripts I have come across some interesting statements in the introduction and colophon of a Leiden manuscript of De Materia Medica. This manuscript belongs to the Warner Collection or Legatum Warnerium of the Library of the University of Leiden, Cod. Or. 289. This vast and valuable collection of oriental manuscripts was acquired by Levinus Warner in the early seventeenth century during his term of appointment as Dutch ambassador to the Ottoman court in Istanbul. The collection was given to the university upon the death of Mr. Warner in 1665.
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2 We draw most of our information about the translation of Dioscorides's De Materia Medica from Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʻa who tells us that Sṭefan ibn Basil and Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq were responsible for the translation. Abū al-Abbās Aḥmad ibn al-Qāsim ibn Abī Usaybiʻa, ‘Uyūn al-anba’ fi ṭabaqāt al-aṭibba,’ ed. August Muller, Vol. II (Cairo, 1882), p. 48. There is also anothers edition by Nazar Rida (Beirut, 1965), p. 281.
3 Ẓahir al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Ali ibn Zayd al-Bayhaqī ibn Funduq, Tatimmat Ṣiwān al-ḥikma, ed. Muhammad Shafi‘ (Lahore, 1935), pp. 22–23, 40.
4 Abū al-Hasan ‘Ali ibn Yūsuf al-Qifṭi, Ta'rīkh al-ḥukamā’, ed. Julius Lippert (Leipzig, 1903), pp. 413–414.
5 Ibn Abī Uṣaybi̒a, ‘Uyūn al-anbā' fi ṭabaqāt al-atibbā, II, 2–3.
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18 Gohlman, The Life of Ibn Sina, p. 121 n. 14. The name is also cited incorrectly as Abū ʻAbd Allāh Ḥusayn… It should read Abū ʻAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ṭabarī al-Nātilī.
19 Ibn Funduq, Tatimmat Ṣiwān al-ḥikma, p. 22 n. I.
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27 Al-Samʻānī. Kitāb al-ansāb, folio 323r, 323v.
28 Ettinghausen, Richard, Arab Painting (Lausanne, 1962), pp. 87–88.Google Scholar
29 Yar-Shater, E., ‘Persian Literature,’ The Cambridge History of Islam, II, 672.Google Scholar
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