Journal Article

An Early Fragment of Ibn Jazlah's Tabulated Manual “Taqwīm al-Abdān” from the Cairo Genizah (T-S Ar.41.137)

LEV, EFRAIM

2014

Overview

Ibn Jazlah was born and raised as a Christian in Karkh (Baghdad) and died in the year 1100. He acquired his medical education in Baghdad, worked at the ʿAḍuḍi hospital, and was appointed as a registrar and physician for the court at the ʿAbbāsid capital and later became a court physician of Caliph al-Muqtadī. Ibn Jazlah wrote several books on various subjects, mainly on medicine. During the process of reconstructing the medical library of the medieval Jewish practitioners in Cairo, a Genizah fragment of a unique tabular medical book in Arabic was identified as Ibn Jazlah's tabulated manual “Taqwīm al-abdān”, which is most probably part of the earliest known copy of the text. A study of the T-S Ar.41.137 clearly shows that it was an uncompleted draft, and can therefore teach us how the medieval copier worked. The image of the fragment is presented here, as well as its transliteration, translation and analysis.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Arabic language / Biographies / Courts / Drug prescriptions / Ethnopharmacology / Fever / Handbooks / Historic documents / History of medicine / Hospitals / Islam / Jewish life & ethics / Lemon juice / Literary translation / Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon) (1135-1204) / Materia medica / Medical cures / Medical education / Medical libraries / Medical schools / Medical treatment / Medicine / Medieval history / Middle Ages / Physicians / Professional education / Religious conversion / Skin diseases / Society / Stomach / Swelling / Therapeutic baths / Transliteration