Editors: Petros Bouras-Vallianatos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) & Dionysios Stathakopoulos (University of Cyprus)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2023
This volume examines the history of drugs within all the major medical traditions of the medieval Mediterranean, namely Byzantine, Islamicate, Jewish, and Latin, and in so doing analyses a considerable number of previously unedited or barely explored texts. A Mediterranean-wide perspective permits a deeper understanding of broader phenomena such as the transfer of scientific knowledge and cultural exchange, by looking beyond single linguistic traditions or political boundaries.
It also highlights the diversity and vitality of the medieval Mediterranean pharmacological tradition, which, through its close links with cookery, alchemy, magic, religion and philosophy, had to be able to adapt to multiple contexts, not least to changing social and political realities, as in the case of drugs as diplomatic gifts.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Note to the Reader
Medieval Mediterranean Pharmacology – Petros Bouras-Vallianatos
Ibn al-Tilmīdh’s Book on Simple Drugs: A Christian Physician from Baghdad on the Arabic, Greek, Syriac, and Persian Nomenclature of Plants and Minerals – Fabian Käs
Drugs, Provenance, and Efficacy in Early Medieval Latin Medical Recipes – Jeffrey Doolittle
De sexaginta animalibus: A Latin Translation of an Arabic Manāfiʿ al-ḥayawān Text on the Pharmaceutical Properties of Animals – Kathleen Walker-Meikle
Arabic Terms in Byzantine Materia Medica: Oral and Textual Transmission – Maria Mavroudi
The Theriac of Medieval al-Shām – Zohar Amar, Yaron Serri, and Efraim Lev
‘Already Verified’: A Hebrew Herbal between Text and Illustration – Sivan Gottlieb
Making Magic Happen: Understanding Drugs As Therapeutic Substances in Later Byzantine Sorcery and Beyond – Richard Greenfield
Remedies or Superstitions: Maimonides on Mishnah Shabbat 6:10 – Phillip I. Lieberman
When the Doctor Is Not Around: Arabic-Islamic Self-Treatment Manuals As Cultured People’s Guides to Medico-pharmacological Knowledge. The Mamluk Period (1250–1517) – Paulina B. Lewicka
Digestive Syrups and After-Dinner Drinks: Food or Medicine? – Leigh Chipman
Late Byzantine Alchemical Recipe Books: Metallurgy, Pharmacology, and Cuisine – Matteo Martelli
Making Connections between the Medical Properties of Stones and Philosophy in the Work of Albertus Magnus – Athanasios Rinotas
Healing Gifts: The Role of Diplomatic Gift Exchange in the Movement of Materia Medica between the Byzantine and Islamicate Worlds – Koray Durak
Index