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A catalogue of the medical and para-medical manuscripts in the Mosseri Genizah collection
Abstract
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.
... 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. Many have been published by scholars such as Mann, 23 Goitein, 24 Gil, 25 Friedman 26 and others. ...
... 63 Ibid, pp. 139y141.And don't exaggerate spreading paste on the eczema -that is, don't use too much ben tree, 64 white lily 65 and white alum, 66(22) and whatever increases the pus and the eczema. Regarding the cut, the lead [should be burned] (23) together with the ban and the camphor, 67 as you see fit, and be as gentle as you can.Drink(24)is suitable for this condition, as you can see, and the smelling(25)of myrtle 68 and pond lily 69 and dates. ...
... As a founder of that team, I have studied three Genizah collections in the UK for my research on medieval medicine in Egypt and the Mediterranean region: the T-S Genizah Collection; 16 the John Rylands Cairo Genizah collection; 17 and the Mosseri collection. 18 A few genres of medical fragments were defined such as books, 19 prescriptions, 20 lists of drugs and correspondence. 21 This article will focus on medical notebooks that form an intermediate genre between books and prescriptions since they do not easily fit into any of the fragment categories described above. ...
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.
Various issues involving theoretical and practical dimensions of medicine have been studied by using the Cairo Genizah. However, there are few in-depth studies on medical education. This article focuses on the medieval Arabic ophthalmology textbook, Masāʾil wa-ajwiba fīʿilm ṣināʿat al-kuḥl (hereafter MI), written by Dāniyāl ibn Shuʿyā. This is a textbook that arranges ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā’s Tadhkirat al-kaḥḥāllīn (hereafter TK) into the question-and-answer format.
MI is a concise and comprehensive textbook that includes anatomy, physiology, diagnostics, therapeutics, and pharmacology. Whereas Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Masāʾil fī al-ʿayn is limited to theoretical knowledge, MI contains the total procedure from knowing nature of eye diseases to treatment, and enables readers to apply certain medicinal substances to specific situations. However, MI’s crucial defect is that it arranges treatment plans along one linear disease progression, and cut off many derivative plans.
Schematic composition is the remarkable feature of MI. Dāniyāl ibn Shuʿyā adopted some medical categories, which had been recognized but left unused in earlier Arabic medical books, in order to present the content in the concise scheme.
The content of MI basically follows that of TK; therefore, it does not contain remarkably new elements. However, since Dāniyāl ibn Shuʿyā arranged TK into the roughly fixed pattern, he occasionally had to fill omissions of TK with his original questions and answers. These new components were presumably referred to by later ophthalmologists such as Khalīfa ibn Abī al-Maḥāsin al-Ḥalabī.
This paper reveals the practice of compounding medicines from the perspective of medieval Arabic medical books and the Cairo Genizah, focusing on ophthalmology. Some researchers have argued that, due to the large number of new remedies added through experience and trade, physicians gradually became free from the classical four-quality theory. However, our study shows that a kind of logic can be discerned in compound medicines, and that this logic requires knowledge of the classical four-quality theory. The practical dimensions have been neglected because most Arabic materials do not say anything about it. Given this textual restriction, The Cairo Genizah is important for Arabic medical history, because it o ers abundant information about medical practices.
Among medical fragments of the Cairo Genizah, we focused on the speci c genre, which we would call “notebooks.” The text found in notebooks is consisting of recipes for compound medicines. Quite often, the genizah notebooks contain original recipes that are not found in the medical books. These are thought to be clearer re ections of the actual practice in medieval Cairo. We took up treatments of conjunctivitis (ramad) and eruptions of the eyelids (jarab). Firstly, we explored several medical books, and summarized the descriptions that related to the treatments of these eye diseases. Secondly, turning to the genizah notebooks, we collected recipes for the eye medicines, listed all of the ingredients, and checked their qualities. Finally, taking the characteristics of each ingredient into consideration, we examined whether or not these recipes exhibited theoretical consistency. Through a close examination of these materials, we found that the ingredients in the notebook recipes are different from those in the medical books, although their temperaments fulfill the conditions required for particular treatments. The ophthalmologists might have recognized the required effects for certain eye diseases, and then chosen substances that met those requirements.
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).
Since the publication of Medical and Para-medical Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections in 1994, 1 many more medical fragments have come to light. The present updated list includes the documents of the Arabic Series catalogued by Baker and Polliack, 2 the documents of the New Series catalogued by Shivtiel and Niessen 3 and other hitherto unpublished items. The intention is to make the information about medical documents from the Cairo Genizah available for scholars especially interested in the research of the history of medieval Arabic and Jewish medicine and pharmacology.
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”.
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.
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).