GERRIT BOS, TRANS., Ibn al-Jazzar on SexualDiseases and Their Treatment, Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series (London and New York:Kegan Paul International, 1997). Pp. 417. $130.25 cloth.

Extract

With the series of critical editions and studies of Arabic medical texts from the Middle Ages he has published in recent years, Gerrit Bos has made a significant contribution to the history of medicine in the Islamic world. He has dedicated special attention to the work of Abu Jaעfar Ahmad ibn Abi Khalid ibn al-Jazzar of Qayrawan, a 10th-century physician and prolific author of medical texts. Ibn al-Jazzar was famous and influential not only within his own Arabic– Islamic cultural domain but also—thanks to widely circulated translations of his works into Greek, Latin, and Hebrew—among Christian and Jewish physicians in the East as well as the West. (For Bos's publications on Ibn al-Jazzar's writings see p. 406).