Islamic herbalist Ibn Juljul
One of the most famed Muslim herbalists is Ibn Juljul. Abu Da’ud Sulayman b. Hassan, known as Ibn Juljul, was born in Cordova in 332 H/ 944 CE. He studied grammar & tradition from the age of ten; at fifteen he began the study of medicine in which he became very skillful. We are told that he was the personal physician to Al-Mu’ayyad Billah Hisham, Caliph from 977 to 1009 CE, during whose reign he wrote most of his medical works.
Ibn Juljul seems to have been concerned mainly with the herbal, pharmaceutical aspects, which formed a vital part of medical work at that time. He shared much the same medical background & training as Al-Zahrawi; they both worked & wrote during the latter days of the Caliphate in Andalus. Ibn Abi Usaybi’a & Al-Qifti, the two best-known historians of medicine, both speak highly of Ibn Juljul, though they give slightly different lists of his writings. Both agree that he wrote a history: Tabaqat al-Atibba’wa’l Hukama, which has been edited in recent years. This history has brief sections on every period, starting with the legendary fathers of medicine, but is probably of greatest interest for Ibn Juljul’s account of his predecessors & contemporaries in Andalus. He speaks of considerable contact between the Eastern Caliphate & Andalus, & students travelling in search of knowledge & training. Building upon his study of Dioscorides’ Herbal, he produced a supplement, named a maqalah “on those drugs which Dioscorides did not mention”, containing around sixty items. This work follows the scheme & style of earlier writers, generally giving the appearance, action, & nature of each plant, its place in the accepted scheme of medicine, with its mixture or temperament (mizadj), its “powers” & its effect on any particular humour or organ. Ibn Juljul gives the origin – as far as he knows it – of all but seventeen of these items: twenty-eight from India (or at any rate, coming through the Indian trade route), two from Yemen, two from Egypt (one of these also from Al-Qayrawan), one from Ceylan, one from Khwarizm. A few are from Andalus: one in general, two from near Cordova, one from near Cadiz; the Khaizuran (bamboo) has two types, an Andalusi & an Indian. With the items from Andalus, he sometimes adds the name of the person who first used them or told him about them. Concerning the Bezoar stone “which counteracts all poisons . . . a yellowish stone with white streaks, Abu ‘Abd-Allah al-Siqilli told me that he saw it once in the mountains of Qurtubah.” Of Shajarat al-kaff, the Vitex agnus castus, “Tariq the herbalist, among us in Qurtubah, knows it; he is the first to have made it widely known.” He had other informants too: on Ribas, the rhubarb, he describes it & then says: “I enquired about the Ribas from some people from the Far East, who told me that it is a sour-tasting vegetable with fleshy leaves like those of the humad (succulents); & one reliable merchant, who knows about its use, told me that the Ribas has extremely sour roots which are found in snow-covered mountains.” His list contains the practical, the exotic & the mythical, but all were considered elements of medicine that should be known about, & mostly used.
Later authors who used Ibn Juljul’s work include Al-Ghafiqi the botanist & Ibn Maymun (Maimonides), who does not quote from him directly but mentions him as one from whom he learnt, & Ibn al-Baytar quotes him on fourteen of the drugs which occur in his supplement. Ibn Juljul’s work evidently stood the test of time & was of particular use & value to scholars & practitioners in his own region of Andalus, & in the Maghrib. He used & respected the “Ancients” but did not simply transmit the Greek learning; he made valuable contributions to the practical knowledge & use of medicinal plants, & was held in great respect by contemporary & later scholars & physicians.
Islamic herbalist Ibn Samjun
Ibn Abi Usaybi’a tells us that Ibn Samjun who appears to have been exclusively a herbalist, was an expert in the art of medicine. He lived & worked in Cordoba, where he died around 1002 CE. He is known for one book, the Collection of Sayings of the Ancients & Moderns, of the Physicians & Philosophers, on the Simple Drugs. Parts of this work exist in manuscript in Oxford & London. In the surviving sections of the Collection, Ibn Samjun quotes Ibn Juljul on around thirty of the items which appear in the supplement. Ibn Samjun seems generally to have been neglected, yet, in the opinion of Levey, who wrote one of the best, if not the best, work on Islamic pharmacology. Ibn Samjun must be recognized as one of the greatest botanists & pharmacologists of the entire Islamic period, probably far outstripping Ibn al-Baytar & al-Ghafiqi. Ibn Samjun’s account of mandrake illustrates his meticulousness. He begins with a description of its appearance & the value of its morphological structures, & then goes on to the various words used in connection with the mandrake, the degrees of its qualities, i.e. cold, warmth, moistness, & dryness, its pharmacological properties as a simple & in compound remedies for various ailments, & finally its use in a prescription as an antidote. This elaborate method of description of simples in alphabetical order became the archetype for Ibn al-Baytar centuries later when he wrote the most comprehensive work in this form on the subject.
Islamic herbalist Ibn Al-Wafid
Ibn Al-Wafid (997-1075) of Toledo, according to Cadi (judge) Sâ’id Al-Andalusi, is the most able of scientists in the composition of simple remedies, superior in ability to all his contemporaries. What characterised Ibn Al-Wafid was his immense knowledge of medical matters & therapeutics, with the skills to treat grave & insidious diseases & afflictions. Cadi Sâ’id holds that Ibn Al-Wafid spent twenty years to gather, organise, & check all the names of drugs, their properties, & their potency. He preferred to use dietetic measures, & if drugs were needed, he preferred to use the simplest ones, before recommending compound drugs, & when he did use compound drugs, he gave priority to those less complex. If & when he resorted to the use of compound drugs, he did so only sparingly, preferring the lowest amount possible. His main work on simple drugs, Kitab al-adwiya al-mufrada, is partly extant in a Latin translation (Liber de medicamentis simplicibus). This work was not printed in Arabic, but there exists a Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona, which was later issued as a supplement to the Opp. Mesues, & also published together with the tacuin sanitasis & Al-Kindî in Strasbourg in 1531.
Ibn al-Wafid’s work was five hundred pages long, & the Latin translation of it is only a fragment of the original. There are also translations in Catalan & also Hebrew. The De medicamentis simplicibus has been printed frequently, together with the Latin translation of the works of Masawaih al-Mardini (Venice 1549) or of Ibn Jazla’s Taqwim (Dispositio corporum de constitutione hominis) (Strasbourg 1532) . Ibn Al-Wafid is also the author of a pharmacopeia & manual of therapeutics entitled al-wisada fi’l-tib (book of the pillow on medicine), which according to Vernet could be a misreading of the Arabic title Kitab al-Rashad fi ‘l-tibb (guide to medicine). This work can be considered complementary to the preceding one as Ibn Al-Wafid describes compound medicine & it is a practical book; the information given is based on experience. Ibn Abi Usaybi’a, the Muslim medical historian, attributes to Ibn Al-Wafid a work entitled Mujarabat fi ‘l-Tibb (medical experiments) which could probably be identified with this book just cited. Ibn Al-Wafid remained renowned for his marvellous & memorable cures of very serious cases of ill health, relying on very simple & basic treatments.
Al-Ghafiqi (d. 1165), from Ghafiq, near Cordova, is an important & well known physician & medical author. In his work, Kitab al-jami’ fi ‘l-adwiya al-mufrada (Book of Simples) there is a clear continuing adaptation of new plants not mentioned in either classical Greek sources or in comparable botanical guides written in the Muslim East. This book was re-published by Max Meyerhof & G.P. Sobhy in Egypt in 1932. As an original thinker & sincere observer, Hamarneh notes that Al-Ghafiqi gave adequate, rational, & systematic descriptions of the physical properties of simples, their varieties, therapeutic uses, & the means to divulge & check adulteration. Interestingly, he also differentiated between the professional duties of the physician & the pharmacist. His Materia medica manual was one of the finest on the topic that was produced during this entire medieval period.
Islamic herbalist Al-Idrisi
Another contemporary amongst this group was Al-Idrîsî, the famed geographer who also wrote on plants & their curative effects. Al-Idrîsî (1100-1166) wrote his Jami’ on Materia Medica, sorted alphabetically & arranged in three parts. In examining the Jami’, one becomes impressed in two areas in which the author excelled in a particularly significant way:
Al-Idrîsî’s knowledge of the fauna & flora of many lands which he visited & mentioned in the text: North Africa (he was born in Ceuta on the northern coast of Morocco), Spain (he studied & lived in Cordoba), Sicily where he served in the palace of the Norman king, Roger II, Egypt, & other parts of Europe & Byzantium.
His acquaintance with many languages & technical botanical terms. He gives drug synonyms in Spanish, Arabic, Berber, Hebrew, Latin, Greek & Sanskrit. At the end of the section on drugs which are described under each letter of the alphabet, he gives an index of their entries. He then adds explanatory remarks concerning them included unfamiliar names of simples, diseases, weights & measures, & technical words. The text also shows his dedication & diligence as a shrewd investigator. For example, he mentions how he continued his research for some time to identify a kind of thistle, the Onopordon acanthium (Linn) of which many varieties were known.
Islamic herbalist Al-Qalanisi
The Aqrabadhin of Al-Qalanisi (fl. late 12thC ) is extant in several copies. In the introduction to its 49 chapters, the author explained his motives for compiling his manual: “I found most formularies filled with recipes of seldom needed compounded remedies, with prescribed ingredients hard to find & difficult to administer even after being prepared.’ Topics discussed by Qalanisi are:
The seasons, techniques, & procedures used in gathering vegetable drugs, whether fruits, flowers, leaves, roots, gums, or seeds, as well as animal drugs. He considered minerals the most important & effective of the simples gathered from the three natural kingdoms.
Interpretation of the meaning of technical words & phraseology as rendered from Greek into Arabic. For example, the transliterated words of aqrabadhin & theriac, & the meaning of such terms as sakanja bin (a mixture of vinegar & honey in water), robs, electuaries, & lohocks. The discussion is most interesting & deserves further future studies.
Description & administration of pharmaceutical preparations such as gargles, fumigators, eye salves & collyriums, dentifrices, liniments, suppositories & ovules, hazelnut-shaped troches, toilette products, & medicated cosmetics.
Description of apparatus used in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals & their application. Qalanisi, for example, describes a clyster enema of 50 mithqals capacity (about one-half of a pint) used in medical therapy. The clyster is a tube-like cylinder divided into two parts; one is half the length of the other & is separated by a partition securely welded to the body of the cylinder. The smaller part has a mouthpiece open to the outside. The mouthpiece of the larger one is smooth & delicate for inserting the lukewarm enema liquid into the body’s cavity in such a way as to prevent admission of air. The simples used in the preparing of solutions & infusions for enemas are also specified according to need. Mention is made of formulae used for insecticides & pesticides which include such ingredients as sulphur, ammonium salts, naphtha, tar, pitch, African rue, & laurel.
Islamic herbalists Ibn Sirabiyun & Ibn al-Suri
Ibn Sirabiyun, commonly known as Serapion Junior, lived not earlier than the 11thC (c. 1070). Many works on “simples” were written under the name of Serapion. The work Selecta artis medico’ has been ascribed to the Serapions, but the material available does not justify a definite conclusion on the matter. Serapion Junior, however, wrote a work based on Dioscorides & Galen entitled Liber de medicamentis simplicibus or De temperamentis simplicium, in which he mentions a similar work by Ibn Al-Wafid (Aben Guefit.) Serapion Junior was perhaps translated into Latin from Hebrew, but there are no Arabic manuscripts of this work extant. The work was translated into Latin by Simon de Cordo of Genoa, & also by Abraham of Tortosa. Other Latin publications include the Venetian of 1479 & 1552; the latter was issued under the following title Serap. De simplic. Medicam, historia libri Vii Nicol Mutono interprete. The Latin version published at Strasbourg in 1531 was based on the translation of Abraham of Tortosa & was issued together with the works of Ibn Rushd, Al-Razi & Galen.
Rashid al-Din Ibn al-Suri, one of the most original of Muslim botanists, was a contemporary of Ibn al-Baytar. Born at Sur (Tyre) in 1177-78, he studied medicine in Damascus under Abd al-Latif & was attached to a hospital in Jerusalem. He served under the Ayyubid Sultan al-Mu’azzam, & after the latter’s death in 1227 under his successor Al-Nasir, who appointed him chief of physicians. He finally established himself in Damascus, where he died around 1242. Al-Suri wrote a treatise on simple medicines (al-adwiya al-mufrada), wherein he discussed the views explained by one of his colleagues Taj al-Din al-Bulghari in a similar treatise. What distinguished Ibn al-Suri was that he traveled extensively & explored the Lebanon range to discover & collect plants. He was accompanied by an artist whose business it was to represent them in color as completely as possible at different stages of their growth. In his work on the Materia Medica, he had the herbs which had been the subject of his investigations painted, not only as they grew, but as they appeared, when dried, on the shelves of the druggist; his is the first example of an Arabic book illustrated in color.
The apogee of botanical writing in Arabic was reached by Ibn al-Baytar (1197-1248). He was born in Malaga & studied in Seville, where he collected plants with his teachers. Ibn-al-Baytar travelled in Spain & North Africa as an herbalist, & later lived in Cairo as Chief Herbalist. From Egypt he travelled extensively through Syria & Asia Minor, & died in Damascus in 1248. A pupil of Ibn Rumiya, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabâti (the Botanist), Ibn al-Baytar was also greatly influenced by the work of Al-Ghafiqi’s (d. 1165) Kitab al-Adwiyat al-Mufradah (The Book of Simple Drugs). Of his outstanding works, one concerned Materia Medica, the other was on simple remedies-medical preparations containing but one ingredient. The latter was a description of animal, vegetable & mineral ingredients, obtained from his own research & experiments as well as data that he had learned from Greek & Muslim sources. Ibn al-Baytar collected a number of new medicinal plants which were introduced into pharmaceutical knowledge. It is held that there was not a fruit or vegetable known to horticulture at that time that was not grown in the vicinity of Malaga, his home-town.
Ibn al-Baytar produced his work Al-Mughni fi al-Adwiyah (the Sufficient), which is extant in many copies, notably in Paris, in Arabic. The work subdivides in 20 chapters, dealing with simples for the cure of head diseases; simples for the cure of ear diseases; simples for cosmetics, simples used as counter poisons, most used simples in medicine, simples used for fevers & atmospheric alterations, & so forth. In this work, the author makes many observations such as the following on smallpox: “As soon as the pustules appear on a child, he must be treated at the sole of the feet with henna, which then will prevent the disease spreading to the eyes. I have many times observed this.”
Ibn al-Baytar’s best known work, however, is Al-Kitab ‘l-jami’ fi ‘l-aghdiya wa-‘l-adwiyah al-mufradah (The Comprehensive book of foods & simple remedies), the most comprehensive encyclopedic work on simple drugs. It was the greatest medieval treatise on this subject, a fundamental work on botany, describing 3000 simples, all listed in alphabetical order. The best manuscripts of this work are in Oxford, & there are also two in Hamburg. The translation of Galland is lost, but an Arabic manuscript is at Leyden Bibl. acad. 805 3: lbn Beitar medicamenta simplicia ord. alphab. Ex. Gal. et Dioscor.
