About this Item

Title: Fragments of the Treatise on Plants by Dioscorides

Summary
The Greek physician Dioscorides lived in the first century AD during the reign of Emperor Nero. His five-volume treatise Peri ules iatriches, commonly known in Latin as De Materia Medica (Of Medical Substances), is considered one of the most important medical manuals and pharmacopeias of ancient Greece and Rome. The work was highly respected during the Middle Ages in both the Western and Arab worlds. It describes the therapeutic properties of natural substances derived from animals, plants, and minerals.

The manuscript presented here contains fragments of an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s work. In Arabic, the work is known by several titles, including Kitab al-hasha’ish (The Book of Plants), Kitab al-maqalat al-khams (The Five-Essay Book), or simply Kitab Disqurīdis (Dioscorides’s Book). The first Arabic translation was produced by Istafan ibn Basil (Stephanos Basilos) and later improved by the renowned scholar Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-Ibadi (circa 809–873), who was appointed by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun to lead the famous Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad.

This manuscript was most likely copied in Upper Mesopotamia during the 12th century. It is written on parchment in a refined naskhi script and includes entries from all five books of the original work, beginning with plant-based ointments in Book I and ending with wines and mineral-based preparations in Book V. Folio 19 verso mentions Hisham ibn Musa ibn Yusuf as either the scribe or possibly the translator. His title, al-masihi al-mutatabbib, suggests that he was a Christian herbalist.

The manuscript is currently preserved in the National Library of France along with two other similar Arabic manuscripts of Dioscorides’s work. The version presented here differs from those manuscripts. At the beginning of the document there is a printed French commentary from 1909 discussing the colorful illustrations of plants and animals. This is followed by handwritten notes comparing the differences between the Arabic translations and listing the plants and substances described in Dioscorides’s text.

Names
Dioscorides Pedanius, of Anazarbos – Author
Hisham ibn Musa ibn Yusuf – Translator

Created / Published
[Place of publication not identified] : [Publisher not identified], [1100 to 1200]