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, Abū D̲j̲aʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad , Arab physician. According to a statement of the Syro-Arab physician ʿUbayd Allāh b. D̲j̲ibrīl b. Bak̲h̲tīs̲h̲ūʿ, given by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, Ibn Abi ’l-As̲h̲ʿat̲h̲ originated from Fārs. Having been originally an administrative official, he hurriedly left the country after his income had incurred muṣādara , and reached Mosul in a wretched condition. There he treated with success a son of the Ḥamdānid Nāṣir al-Dawla, who had been taken ill. Having thus risen to distinction, he stay…

, once an Arabie port ( furḍa ) on the Red Sea, 20 days’ journey south of Ayla, 3 from al-D̲j̲uḥfa. Until almost the end of the Middle Ages (when Yanbuʿ, which is situated further north, took over this function), al-D̲j̲ār was the supply port of Medina, one day’s journey away (This according to Yāḳūt, ii, 5; according to BGA, vi, 191 it was two days’ journey; according to BGA, i, 19, and ii2, 31 it was three). Al-D̲j̲ār was half on the mainland, and half on an island just offshore. Drinking water had to be brought from the Wādī Yalyal, two parasangs distant. It was a…

, Abū Unays (or Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ), son of a blood-letter ( ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ām , Ibn Rusta, BGA vii, 215), head of the house of Ḳays. He is reported to have been of a vacillating character ( d̲j̲aʿala yuḳadd̲j̲mu rid̲j̲l an wa-yuʾak̲h̲k̲h̲iru uk̲h̲rā , Ag̲h̲ānī xvii, 111) and this is ¶ borne out by his changing attitude towards the ruling Umayyad house, in which he proved easy to influence. He was a keen follower of Muʿāwiya, first as head of the police ( ṣāḥib al-s̲h̲urṭa ), and then as governor of the d̲j̲und of Damascus. In the year 36/656, al-Ḍaḥḥāk defeated the ʿ…

(a.) (Aramaic s̲h̲āg̲h̲ā , from Skr. saka-) is the teak tree, Tectona grandis L., of the family of the Verbenaceae . This tree, indigenous to the Indian subcontinent and to South-East Asia, is above all coveted for its hard and extraordinarily durable wood and is of particular importance for ship-building and furniture industry. The tree and its qualities are described in detail by the Arabic authors. Sād̲j̲ . is the highest tree in the world; it towers high into the air ( yaʿlū fi ’l-hawāʾ [var. ’l-samāʾ ]) and has such a width that a multitude of people fin…

(a., from Aramaic sīḥā ) is the plant species Artemisia, Compositae . The word was probably used by the Arabs as a collective noun for the some 200 types of this species, spread in the Mediterranean area and the temperate latitudes. These types occur as herbs and shrubs, many of them being aromatic. In medicine, the herb and its ethereal oil as well as the blossoming buds and their ethereal oil are used mainly as aromaticum amarurn, as a stomachic, digestive, carminative, choleretic drug, and the blossoming…

( ḳiṭrān , ḳaṭirān ) is 1. tar obtained by dry distillation ( taṣʿīd “vaporisation”) of organic substances; 2. the residuum left after the distillation of tar, i.e., liquid pitch; 3. cedar-oil (in Dioscorides κεδία, Ar. ḳadriya ) extracted from cedarwood. The substance is obtained from several kinds of coniferous trees, especially the Cedrus Libani (Ar. s̲h̲ad̲j̲ar al-s̲h̲arbīn ), but also from the Oxycedrus L. and various kinds of cypresses. The substance was already widely used in antiquity for many technical and therapeutic pur…

, Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān b. Ḥassān al-Andalusī , Arab physician, perhaps of Spanish extraction, born in Cordova 332/944, died after 384/994. He began the study of grammar and tradition in Cordova in 343/954, but already at the age of 15 turned to medicine, in which field ten years later he was an acknowledged authority. He was the personal physician of al-Muʾayyad bi’llāh His̲h̲ām (336-99/977-1009). It was during this period that he wrote most of his works, such as the Tafsīr anwāʿ al-adwiya al-mufrada min kitāb Diyusḳūrīdūs , composed in 372/982 (of which only …

(pl. of afwāh , sing, fūh ) are spices, aromatic substances, which are added to food and beverages in order to increase pleasant flavor ¶ and promote digestion. In general they are vegetable products which are active through their contents of volatile oils or pungent substances. The classification according to the individual constituents of plants (fruits and seeds, blossoms and buds, peel, roots, etc.), in use at present, does not seem to have been in practice realised anywhere. It is possible that Abū Ḥanīfa al-Dīnawarī (end 3rd/9th century) has this in mind when he says that al-afwāh …

, in Arabic mineralogy and pharmacology considered to be one of the at least six kinds of bawraḳ [ q.v.]. It is the νίτρον/ nitrum of the ancients, but indicates not our saltpetre but a compound of sodium carbonate (NaCO 3) and sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO 3) with several impurities. In reverse bawraḳ, because of the vagueness of the term (see Dietlinde Goltz, Studien zur Geschichte der Mineralnamen in Pharmazie , Chemie und Medizin von den Anfängen bis Paracelsus , Wiesbaden 1972, 248-50), is considered as a kind of naṭrūn (Maimonides, S̲h̲arḥ asmāʾ al-ʿuḳḳār , ed. M…

, Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar Amad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad Ibn al-Sayyid , Spanish-Arabic pharmaco-botanist, native of the fortress G̲h̲āfiḳ near Cordova. His dates are not known, but he may have died around the middle of the 6th/12th century. He was considered to be the best expert on drugs of his time; he elaborated thoroughly the material transmitted from Dioscurides and Galen and presented it in a concise, but appropriately complete form in his Kïtāb al-Adwiya al-mufrada . According to Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa ( ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ ii, 133, 14), Ibn al-Bayṭār was accustomed to take…

( fawdand̲j̲ , fawtand̲j̲ , etc.) is mint Mentha L. (Labiatae). The term is of Persian, and ultimately of Indian origin ( pūdana ), which explains the various ways of transcription in the Arabic rendering. Under the name ḥabaḳ mint was well-known to the Arab botanists (Aṣmaʿī, K. al-Nabāt , ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-G̲h̲unaym, Cairo 1392/1972, 17). They describe it as a fragrant plant with an acrid taste, square-sectioned stalk and leaves similar to those of the willow. It often grows near water and resembles the water-mint, called nammām . The Beduins considered it as…

, Arabic for the myrtus, Myrtus communis L. (Myrtaceae), the well-known fragrant, evergreen shrub, growing to over a man’s height. The term, derived from Akkadian āsu came into Arabic through Aramaic āsā the Greek term μυρσίνη (μύρτος) exists also as marsīnī (and variants). Much material has been collected by I. Low ( Die Flora der Juden , ii, 257-74), among which are many, more or less locally-defined synonyms. Occasionally, myrtle is mentioned in the ḥadīt̲h̲ (Dārimī, see Wensinck, Concordance , i, 132b), by the Arab botanists and in the verses quoted by them (Dīnawarī, K. al-Nabāt …

( būraḳ ) is natron, sesqui-carbonate of soda, a compound of various salts containing mainly sodium carbonate (soda). Derived from the Persian būra , the term does not indicate borax in the modern sense (Natrium biboracicum), but has given its name to it. The Arabic lexicographers know the bawraḳ māʾī , b. d̲j̲abalī , b. armanī , b. miṣrī (= naṭrūn ), b. al-ṣāg̲h̲a (“borax of the goldsmiths”, Chrysocolla), b. al-Ḵh̲abbāzīn (or: al-Ḵh̲ubz ) and b. ifrīḳī . Since unbiased elucidations of these terms are almost completely lacking, this enumeration is almost valueless. Al-Ḵh̲wārazmī ( Mafatīḥ…

(a.), coral. As a rule, red coral ( Corallium rubrum) is used as a piece of jewelry; the black and white coral are also mentioned. The Persian term bussad̲h̲ , often employed as a synonym, strictly speaking is the root of the coral “which grows as a stone in the sea in the same way as a tree on land” (al-¶ Ḳazwīnī, Cosmography , i, 212,7), as well as the subsoil to which it is stuck. With the pearl ( luʾluʾ [ q.v.]) and amber ( kahrubā [ q.v.]), the coral belongs to the organic products which were however, as in our time, mostly associated with the precious stones ( d̲j̲awāhir ), i.e. the minerals ( maʿādin …

, also nīlad̲j̲ (Persian, from Skr. nīla “blue”) is Indigo tinctoria L., Indigoferae , the oldest known organic dye. It is the main component of natural indigo, which can be obtained from various kinds of indigofera ( Isatis tinctoria, Cruciferae ) and from the knotweed ( Polygonum tinctorium, Polygonaceae ). For thousands of years indigo has been used in India, China, as well as in Egypt, to paint and dye various fabrics. Classical antiquity knew indigo as a medicine; the Arabs cultivated the plant and produced the dye themselves. The Arab translators of Dioscurides did not find an…

, or Dārṣīnī (Persian dār čīnī “Chinese wood”) is the Chinese cinnamon ( Cinnamomum cassia ), next to the Ceylonese cinnamon ( Cinn. zeylanicum ) the most valuable spice from plants of the cinnamon species, of the family of the Lauraceae, perhaps the oldest spice altogether. The rind of the branch of the cinnamon-tree was used in China as medicine, aromatic substance and spice already in the 3rd millennium B.C., and reached the Near East and the ¶ Mediterranean coun…

, D̲j̲amāl al-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-S̲h̲aybānī , versatile Arab writer, born in 568/1172 at Ḳifṭ in Upper Egypt. He received his early education in Cairo and in 583/1187 went to Jerusalem, where his father had been appointed as deputy to the Ḳāḍī al-Fāḍil, the famous chancellor and adviser of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin). During the many years which he spent as a student there he was already collecting the material for his later works. He was forced by t…

, like al-ṣaydalānī , primarily meant a perfume merchant or druggist; but as most scents ( ʿiṭr , pl. ʿuṭūr ) and drugs (usually ʿaḳḳār , pl. ʿaḳāḳīr ) were credited with some healing properties, ʿaṭṭār also came to mean chemist and homoeopath ( mutaṭabbib ). His activities combine commerce with science and medicine. He has to know the diverse…

(Persian k̲h̲ār čīnī “hard substance from China”), also …

, Abu Bakr ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd b. Sufyān al-Kuras̲h̲ī al-Bag̲h̲dādī , Arabic writer, born in 208/823 in Bag̲h̲dād and died there in 281/894. Although he was a freedman of the Umayyads, he became the tutor of several ʿAbbāsid princes and in particular of those who were later to become caliphs as al-Muʿtaḍid and al-Muḳtafī. Ibn Abi ’l-Dunyā was a learned teacher, highly respected for his exemplary way of life; he is counted as a “weak” traditionist only by the S̲h̲īʿīs (Māmaḳānī, Tanḳīḥ al-maḳāl , 7028). He led a pious and ascetic life ( zuhd ), combined wit…