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Medieval Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic Prescriptions (and the edition of three medical prescriptions)
Abstract
The literature on medicine in medieval Muslim countries in general and in Egypt in particular is vast and detailed. Yet study and assessment of the practical aspects of medicine in the Mediterranean society of the Middle Ages requires examination of authentic, practical medical knowledge. At present this can be extracted mainly from the prescriptions found in the Cairo Genizah; these supply a different and valuable dimension. On the importance and the potential of research into the medical aspects of the Genizah documents, mainly prescriptions, Goitein wrote in 1971 that “these prescriptions have to be examined by experts in the history of medicine”.
... Turkey/Tetra ağacı, sumak Ulcers Fruits [25] Palestine/ Tanner's sumac Liver diseases, diarrhea and urinary system Fruits [26] Jordan/ Tanning sumac Stimulates perspiration, diarrhea, reduces cholesterol Fruits [27] Medieval & Ottoman al-Sham Stomach and intestine, eye diseases, animal bites and poisons Pains, hemorrhoids and sexual diseases Fruits [28] Cyprus/ Tanner's sumac or roudin, soumakin Hemorrhage (Internal), respiratory tract diseases: catarrh and common cold. Fruits, leaves & seeds [29] Cairo-Egypt Eye diseases, dentistry, aborts the fetus, treats sore throats, prevents diarrhea Fruits [32] 2. Phytochemical studies R. coriaria is known for its significant uses in food seasoning, traditional medicine and industry. [33] Accordingly, the plant has been the subject of intensive phytochemical investigations that aimed to isolate and characterize the chemical composition of both volatile and nonvolatile secondary metabolites constituents. ...
... R. coriaria has been prescribed by traditional healers in the Mediterranean region for the treatment of many ailments (Table 2) including liver diseases, diarrhea and urinary system, [26] eye diseases, [28] internal hemorrhage, [29] respiratory tract [29] and for treating dysentery. [32] Additionally, ethnopharmacological surveys of the extracts obtained from R. coriaria different parts of the plant revealed a wide spectrum of interesting bioactivities, like cytotoxic, antioxidant, antimaicrobial, antidiabetes, anti-inflammatory effects. This could be attributed to the diverse classes of phytochemicals in this plant that are responsible for the observed pharmaceutical effect, including main phenolic components like gallic acid and its derivatives, quercetin, iso-quercetin, kaempferol and rosmarinic acid. ...
Rhus coriaria L. (Anacardiaceae), sumac, is a common condiment, appetizer and souring agent in the Mediterranean region that has a long history in traditional medicine. R. coriaria has been prescribed for the treatment of many ailments including diarrhea, ulcer, hemorrhoids, hemorrhage, wound healing, hematemesis, and eye ailments like ophthalmia and conjunctivitis. The plant is also used as diuresis, antimicrobial, abortifacient and as a stomach tonic. Sumac is known to be rich in different classes of phytochemicals including tannins, polyphenols, flavonoids, flavones, organic acids and essential oils and continues to be a hot topic for extensive research work designed for revealing its phytochemical constituents and evaluating its bioactive properties. This review article summarizes the recent phytochemical and diverse bioactivity studies on R. coriaria , especially those concerned with antitumor, antioxidant, hypoglycemic, antimicrobial, and anti‐inflammatory studies.
... It has generated a wealth of publications in various academic platforms. 17 Beyond that, research has shed new light on several important issues such as medical theory vs. practice, 18 medical theory (mainly identifications of early versions of unique medical books), 19 and medical practice (mainly prescriptions), 20 commercial aspects 21 as well as catalogues of medical fragments in other Genizah collections. 22 The Genizah contains thousands of letters on various issues. ...
The Mosseri collection was assembled by Jacques Mosseri (1884-1934), a leading member of the Jewish community of Cairo, between 1909 and 1911. Its more than 7000 fragments include materials from both the classical Genizah period and the modern period of Egyptian Jewry. Recently, the Mosseri collection was loaned by the Mosseri family to Cambridge University Library for conservation, digitising, cataloguing and study. This article is part of that effort. Here, new information about medical documents from the Cairo Genizah is made available to scholars especially interested in research on the history of medieval Arab society in general and Jewish medicine and pharmacology in particular. The sixty-nine items from the Mosseri collection here described will be useful for those already working in the field. Descriptions, without any analyses, of these fragments will later be included in a forthcoming catalogue of all medical and para-medical fragments in the Cambridge Genizah collections.
Hitherto, research on Arabic pharmacy and pharmacology has largely been based on the study of pharmacopoeias. While practical in nature, it is not clear to what extent the recipes in the pharmacopoeias were in fact used. The Cairo Genizah, the most famous and best preserved of the many depositories of documents written by medieval Jewish communities, provides us with a unique glimpse of practical medicine, by virtue of the prescriptions found there. These prescriptions reflect the medical reality that actually existed in the eastern Mediterranean basin in the 10th-13th centuries, and will be compared especially to pharmacopoeias known to have been used, or even deriving from, members of the Genizah community, such as Minha j al-dukka n, al-Dustūr al-bīma ristanī and the works of Maimonides. We will examine three prescriptions in depth, attempting to answer the following questions: Who wrote these prescriptions? Who made them up, i.e. prepared the medical recipes? What can be learnt from the prescriptions about medicine, public/community health, the use of materia medica? To what extent are these prescriptions original, i.e. how do they reflect the relationship between medieval medical theory and practice?
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.
This article presents the medicinal plants that were used by the inhabitants of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean (mainly tenth to thirteenth centuries AD) and analyzes their geographical/phyto-botanical origin and their frequency of use at the medieval time. It also discusses various issues such as their historical trade and the continuation of their use in present-day Middle Eastern traditional medicine.
The Cairo Genizah is an historical source containing about 250,000 documents, found in a semi-archeological context (synagogue and graves). Since Cairo became the capital and consequently the economic and administrative center of the Muslim empire, the Jewish community had close connections with the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa, Southern Europe, Sicily and India. Therefore, these highly valued documents record every aspect of life and reflect on the whole Mediterranean region and beyond.
The inventory of the practical materia medica was reconstructed thanks to hundreds of documents such as prescriptions, list of drugs, and medical letters. It consists of 278 drugs, 223 of which are of plant origin. Asian medicinal plants became highly used in medieval Mediterranean medicine; the vast majority of them are still sold in Middle Eastern markets, although not with the same importance. It is important to note that some of them are sold today mainly for their other uses as spices, perfumes, incense, etc.
This article presents a plethora of fragments from the medical notebooks found in the Cairo Genizah that comprise a unique source of historical data for scholarly study and for a better understanding of the ways in which medieval medical knowledge in Egypt was transferred from theory to practice and vice versa. These documents provide the most direct evidence we have for preferred practical medical recipes because they record the choices of medical practitioners in medieval Cairo. Since the language most commonly used in them was Judaeo-Arabic, they were evidently written by Jews. The medical genre in the notebooks was primarily pharmacopoeic, consisting of apparently original recipes for the treatment of various diseases. There are also a few notebooks on materia medica. The subject matter of the Genizah medical notebooks shows that they were mostly of an eclectic nature, i.e. the writers had probably learnt about these treatments and recipes from their teachers, applied them at the hospitals where they worked or copied them from the books they read. Foremost among the subjects dealt with were eye diseases, followed by skin diseases, coughs and colds, dentistry and oral hygiene, and gynaecological conditions. The writers of the Genizah notebooks apparently recorded the practical medical knowledge they wished to preserve for their future use as amateur physicians, students, traditional healers or professional practitioners.
A new study of the medical fragments at the T-S Genizah collection has revealed 141 practical prescriptions. These are written
in most cases in Arabic script (92) and the minority of them in Hebrew letters, i.e. Judaeo-Arabic (47), one text in Hebrew
and one in Judaeo-Persian. Most of the prescriptions were written on one page, usually on one side of a sheet of paper (very
rarely vellum). The texts in Arabic have a special technical language which uses verbs intensively in the passive voice (hence
LP ‘Language Passivity’) instead of the normal ‘pure imperative’. This method of expression raises many questions about the
reason for this formulation and about the alternative possibilities which exist in these prescriptions alongside LP. The following
article surveys the LP types, makes some orthographical remarks that shed light on LP, singles out other substitutes for LP
in the medical prescriptions in comparison with other medical formularies in the Arabic of the Middle Ages. Finally, it tries
to show, that from a merely linguistic phenomenon one can draw conclusions regarding other historical aspects, such as hints
about the connection ‘physician-patient-pharmacist’ and the way to differentiate between normal theoretical medical texts
and the pure practical medical prescriptions.
Minhāj al-dukkān wa-dustūr al-a'yān fī a'māl wa-tarākīb al-adwiya al-nāfi'a lil-insān (‘The management of the [pharmacist's]
shop and the rule for the notables on the preparation and composition of medicines beneficial to Man’) is a manual for pharmacists
composed in the year 658/1260 in Cairo by the otherwise unknown Abū 'l-Munā Dāwūd b. Abī Naṣr al-Kūhīn al-'Aṭṭār al-Hārūnī
al-Isrā'īlī, from his name a Jewish druggist. Minhāj al-dukkān was composed in the period covered by the Genizah, but hitherto no such manuscript has been identified. We were able to identify
T-S Ar. 40.91 as a fragment of chapter two of Minhāj al-dukkān. In this article we will present a transcription and translation of T-S Ar. 40.91, followed by a description of the sources
and materia medica referred to. Finally, we will show that this fragment is a remnant of one of the earliest manuscripts of Minhāj al-dukkān found so far.
Al-Dustūr al-bīmāristānī by Ibn Abī 'l-Bayān forms an important part of the Arabic tradition of hospital dispensatories and has remained well-known
to the traditional practitioners of the Middle East. So far, eleven fragments of the Dustur have been identified in the Taylor-Schechter
Genizah Collections at the Cambridge University Library, of which eight are in Arabic script and three are in Judaeo-Arabic.
This article discusses the significance of these fragments, particularly those in Judaeo-Arabic. We also provide editions
and translations of two of the fragments.
This report deals with the results of a study of present day uses of traditional medicinal materials in Israel. The survey covered selected markets in medicinal materials, belonging to various religious and ethnic communities, and also included questioning of the sellers and buyers about the healing characteristics of the various materials. The survey yielded information on many and varied medicinal materials, of which 310 are identified according to the following classifications, 264 species of plants (85.1%); 20 species of animals (6.5%); 19 kinds of minerals (6.5%); and seven materials of other or mixed origin (2.3%). Analysis of the data showed that a significant proportion of the materials were of local origin (51.5%) and some were imported from other countries. These data demonstrate that there is still a flourishing and well developed trade in these materials - a trade which is the remnant of a rich and ancient medical culture, which is disappearing from the modern world.
The results of a survey of present-day traditional medicinal materials conducted in 1998-1999 in the Kingdom of Jordan are reported. The study covered selected markets of medicinal substances of ethnic communities throughout the kingdom, and also included questioning of the sellers about the healing characteristics of the various materials. The survey yielded information on many and varied medicinal substances, of which 304 are identified according to the following classifications: 236 species of plants (77.6%); 30 species of animals (9.8%); 29 kinds of inorganic substances (9.6%); and 9 materials of other or mixed origin (3%). Analysis of the data showed that some substances were of local origin (41.8%), but the majority of the substances (45.4%) were imported from other countries. 12.8% of the substances were both local and imported. These data demonstrate that there is still a flourishing and well-developed trade in these materials--a trade that is the remnant of a rich and ancient medical culture, which is disappearing from the modern world.
The Taylor-Schechter (T-S) collection at Cambridge University Library is the biggest of all Cairo Genizah collections in the world. The importance and the potential of research into the medical aspects of the Genizah documents were clear to researcher since the early 1960s. A few works have been published since, usually focusing on one subject, or even important single manuscripts. The current research concerned mainly with one aspect of the history of medicine of the Jewish community of Cairo (as a reflection of Eastern medieval societies), namely the practical uses of natural substances for medicine. The most interesting and original information is undoubtedly to be found in the 141 prescriptions, as they reflect the medical reality that actually existed. And indeed, 242 substances were recorded in the prescriptions identified: 195 substances of plants origin (80.6%), 27 inorganic materials (11.2%) and 20 substances of animal origin (8.2%) were recorded as being in practical used for medicinal purposes. The most frequently mentioned substances were the rose, myrobalan, sugar, almonds, and endive. The most prevalent ailments: eye diseases, headache, constipations (purgative), cough, skin diseases, stomach, fever, gynaecological problems, haemorrhoids, liver ailments, lice, swellings, dental trouble, ulcers, and problems of the urinary tract.
The importance of the Genizah for the research of the medieval Mediterranean communities, supplying information on almost every aspect of life, is well known among historian. Less known is that pharmacy was the most popular of all branches of the healing art in the medieval Jewish community of Cairo, according to the Genizah manuscripts. Sources for study of medieval practical drugs are extremely rare since most records naturally vanish over the years, and only some medical books, which contained theoretical pharmacology, have survived to the present day. Drugs lists enable us to understand medieval practical pharmacy and to reconstruct their inventories. This study reports on 71 original drugs lists that were found in the Genizah; they are different from merchants' letters dealing with commerce in drugs and give no instructions for the use or preparation of formulas as usually found in prescriptions. Twenty-six lists are written in Judeo-Arabic and 45 in Arabic, none of the lists is written in Hebrew. The longest list contains 63 identified substances. These lists were apparently used by pharmacists for professional and business purposes as inventories of drugs, records, orders, or even receipts. Two hundred and six different drugs are mentioned in the drugs lists of which 167 are of plant origin, 16 are of animal origin, and the remaining 23 are inorganic. The lists point directly to the place they occupied on the shelves of the pharmacies that could be found in the lanes and alleys of the Jewish quarter of Cairo. The most frequently mentioned substance were myrobalan (27), pepper and saffron (21), lentisk (15), almond, basil, rose, rosemary (14), cattle products, camphor and spikenard (13).
Maimonides' Life in the Light of the Geniza Documents
- Goitein