Abstract: Abu al-Hassan Ali Ibn Ali Ibn Abi al-Rijal (also known as Haly or Hali, and by the Latinized versions of his name, Haly Albohazen and Haly Abenragel) was a late 10th-century–early 11th century Arab astrologer and astronomer who served as court astrologer in the palace of the Tunisian prince, al-Muizz Ibn Badis. His best known treatise, Kitāb al-bāri' fi ahkām an-nujūm (Complete book on the judgment of the stars), was one of the works translated by the team of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars that King Alfonso X of Castile (reigned 1252–84) assembled in Toledo to translate works of Arabic science into Latin and Castilian Spanish. A manuscript copy containing five of the eight books of a translation into Old Castilian by Yehudā ben Moshe Cohen survives and is in the National Library of Spain. De Judiciis Astrorum (Complete book of the judgment of the stars), a Latin translation of the Old Castilian manuscript, was published in Venice in 1485 and became an important source in Renaissance Europe for the understanding of medieval astrology. The printer was Erhard Ratdolt, a member of a distinguished family of artisans from Augsburg, Germany, who went to Venice around 1475 and established a successful printing business.Physical description: 1 volume; 32 centimeters. Inscription in brown on folio 2a: Caroli Calcagnini. Marginalia, trimmed, in brown.
Abstract: Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik Ibn Zuhr (also known by the Latinized version of his name, Avenzoar, circa 1090–1162), was the leading medical doctor in Islamic Spain. A native of Seville, he studied medicine under his father, and later went into the service of the Almoravids and Almohads. He was a friend and near contemporary of the great Arabic physician Ibn Rushd, or Averroes (1126–98). Ibn Zuhr is said to have written his most famous work, Al-Teisir Fil-Mudawat Wal-Tadbeer (Book of simplification concerning therapeutics and diet), at the suggestion of Averroes, who praised the book in his own medical encyclopedia, Al-Kulliyat (The generalities). Al-Teisir describes preparations for medicines and diets, provides clinical descriptions of diseases, and discusses surgical procedures such as tracheotomy. The original Arabic version of the text was lost, but its contents survived in Hebrew and Latin translations. This Latin edition of 1497 was edited by Hieronymus Surianus (flourished 1458–1502) and produced by the Venetian printer Otinus de Luna. The book includes a second work, a translation of Averroes’s Al-Kulliyat, generally known in the West by its Latin title Colliget.Physical description: 1 volume, 29 centimeters
Abstract: Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi (also known by Latinized versions of his name, Rhazes or Rasis, 865–925 AD) was a Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher. He was born in Rayy, south of present-day Tehran, Iran. After studying philosophy, at around the age of 30 he began studying medicine under the supervision of Abu Al-Hassan al-Tabari. He became the head of a Rayy hospital and later headed a hospital in Baghdad. Al-Razi was known in the fields of medicine and chemistry, which he combined to prescribe medications for numerous ailments. Al-Razi’s Kitab al-Mansouri (Book of medicine dedicated to Mansur) is a short, general textbook on medicine in ten chapters, which he dedicated in 903 to the Samanid prince Abu Salih al-Mansur ibn Ishaq, governor of Rayy. The work was rendered into Latin as Liber ad Almansorem by Gerard de Sabloneta, a 13th-century Italian, who specialized in translating Arab medical texts and who is said to have translated the work of the great Islamic scholar ibn Sīnā, or Avicenna (980–1037), into Latin by order of Emperor Frederick II. The first Latin printed edition of Al-Mansouri was produced in Italy in 1481. This edition from 1500, containing the translation of Al-Mansouri along with other medical tracts by various Arab, Greek, and Jewish authors, was printed in Venice by Johannes Hamman.Physical description: 234 items
Abstract: Yaḥyá ibn Ghālib Khayyāṭ (died circa 835) was an astrologer and pupil of the great Jewish-Persian astrologer Māshāʼallāh (circa 730–circa 815). He was known to mediaeval Christendom as Albohali (variants include Alghihac and Albenahait). Ibn al-Nadīm includes in Abu ʿAlī’s list of works Kitāb al-Masāʾil (The book of interrogations) and Kitāb al-Mawālīd (Book of nativities), both of which are extant, together with several works that are now lost. The latter include Kitāb al-Madkhal (The book of introduction), Kitāb al-Maʿānī (The book of [hidden] meanings), Kitāb al-Duwal (The book of revolutions [of time]), Kitāb Taḥwīl sinī ’l-mawālīd (Book of the annual revolution of nativities), and Kitāb qaḍīb al-dhahab (Book of the rod of gold). Kitāb al-Mawālīd was translated into Latin by Plato of Tivoli in 1136 and by Johann Hispalensis (John of Seville) in 1153. The latter translation was printed in Nuremberg in 1546. Presented here is the second edition, from 1549. It is dedicated by its editor, Joachim Heller (1518–90), to Philipp Melancthon (1497–1560), the German reformer and collaborator of Martin Luther.Physical description: 64 leaves : illustrations ; 19 centimeters
Abstract: Jābir ibn Hayyan (also known by his Latinized name Geber, circa 721–815) was a contemporary of the first Abbasids, who ruled circa 750–800, and one of the principal proponents of alchemy in the early Islamic period. The earliest biography of Jābir, in al-Fihrist, was written in the tenth century by Ibn al-Nadīm, a scholar and bibliographer living in Baghdad. It contains a fair number of legendary elements, although the list of works attributed to Jābir in this work has been shown by external evidence to be generally correct. The entire body of literature attributed to Jābir, comprising works on alchemy, philosophy, astrology, mathematics, music, medicine, magic, and religion, could not, however, have been the work of a single person. Neither could it have been compiled prior to the end of the ninth century, as indicated by the fact that scientific terminology used in the Jābirean corpus was introduced by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī (circa 809–73). The Islamic Gnosticism present in the works of Jābir is of the type that was common at the end of the ninth century, another indication that some of the works attributed to him probably date from this period. These works provide a window into the Islamic Gnosticism of the late ninth century and shed light on classical Greek scientific texts, many of which do not survive in the original. Jābir’s alchemical works include descriptions of distillation, calcification, dissolution, crystallization, and other chemical operations that subsequently were used in the Islamic world and in Europe for centuries. Several works of the Jābirean corpus have been translated into Latin. The present work was written in three parts, covering the properties of metals, alchemical techniques, and the properties of the planets. It was printed in 1531 by Johann Grüninger, a German printer and publisher working in Strasbourg. The work starts with an esoteric poem (“Est fons in limis cuius anguis latet in imis…”) that forms the incipit for an alchemical work kept in the Bavarian State Library, Codex Latinus Monacensis 2848. (The latter manuscript is purportedly a Latin translation of a work on the philosopher’s stone by the Persian alchemist Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā Rāzī.)Physical description: 60 leaves : illustrations ; 28 centimeters
Abstract: This volume printed at the Argentorati shop in Strasbourg (present-day France) in February 1532 includes two works, the first of which is the Latin translation by Theodorus Priscianus (flourished around 400) of his own therapeutic compendium, the Euporista (Easily obtained remedies), originally written in Greek. The second work is the Latin translation of a section of the well-known Arabic medical work by Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas al-Zahrawi (also known by his Latinized name Albucasis, circa 936–1013), Al-Taṣrīf li man ‘ajiza al-ta’līf (The arrangement of [medical knowledge] for one who is unable to compile [a manual for himself]). Not much is known about either author. Theodorus Priscianus was a North African physician who was a student of Vindicianus. The Greek version of his compendium is lost. As the Euporista originally was organized in three sections, the fourth section in the Latin translation is presumably related to material in De Physicis, the only other surviving work (albeit incomplete) by Theodorus. This 1532 edition was published under the name Octavius Horatianus. Al-Zahrawī’s name indicates that he was born in Madinat al-Zahrā, near Cordoba in al-Andalus (Andalusia, or present-day Spain). According to the earliest sources he died in al-Andalus after 1009. Later biographers state that al-Zahrawī worked at the Andalusian courts of ‘Abd al-Raḥman III (ruled 912–61), al-Ḥakam II al-Mustanṣir (ruled 961–76), or al-Manṣūr bi’ llāh (de facto ruler of al-Andalus, 978–1002). Al-Zahrawī’s only surviving work is the enormous al-Taṣrīf li man ‘ajiza al-ta’līf, a work written in 30 chapters, with the first (on general principles), the second (on the symptoms and treatments of diseases), and the 30th (on surgery) forming almost half the work. Al-Taṣrīf enjoyed considerable fame in the Islamic world and in Europe. The first and second chapters were translated into Hebrew in the mid-13th century and subsequently into Latin, and were published in Augsburg in 1519 under the title of Liber theoricae nec non practicae Alsaharavii. The 28th chapter, on “the improvement of medicines, the burning of mineral stones and the medical uses thereof,” was translated into Hebrew and thence into Latin at the end of the 13th century under the title of Liber Servitoris and first printed in Venice by Nicolaus Jenson in 1471. The text presented here, the 30th chapter, on surgery, is the first comprehensive and illustrated treatment of its subject. The long chapter is divided in three sections, or books: one on cauterization; one on phlebotomy, dissection, wounds, and the extraction of arrows; and one on dislocations and bone setting. It was translated into Latin at Toledo by Gerard of Cremona under the title of Liber Alsaharavi de cirurgia and first printed in Venice in 1497, followed by later editions in 1499, 1500, 1520, 1532, and 1540.Physical description: 327 pages : illustrations ; 32 centimeters
Abstract: Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā (980–1037), commonly known as Avicenna, was born at Afshaneh, near Bukhara in Persia (present-day Uzbekistan). By the age of 10, he was well versed in the study of the Qur’ān and various sciences. He was the most famous and influential of the many Islamic scholars, scientists, and philosophers of the medieval world. He was foremost a physician but was also an astronomer, chemist, geologist, psychologist, philosopher, logician, mathematician, physicist, and poet. A prolific writer in all of these fields, he captured the knowledge of the time in well organized texts. Avicenna’s writings influenced the scholarship of medicine in the West into the 17th century. This is an illuminated leaf from one of the earliest (if not the earliest) complete printings of the Canon medicinae (The canon of medicine), the Latin translation of Avicenna’s al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb. The text is about the care of the teeth, gums, and lips. The book was produced in Strasbourg circa 1473 by the noted printer and publisher Adolf Rusch.Physical description: 1 leaf (2 pages)