Arabian Drugs in Medieval Mediterranean Medicine

337 Pages·2017·28.071 MB·English

by  Zohar Amar, Efraim Lev

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r ZohAr AMAr EfrAiM lEv
and
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‘Arabic culture provided the melting pot for the medical substances from the
West and the East which became the staple ingredients of pre-modern medicine. b
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Amar and Lev are to be congratulated for tracing the origins of natural i
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medicaments and the routes that they followed from South East Asia and India
to the Middle East, and from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.’ Dn
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Charles Burnett, Warburg Institute, University of London t
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r D r u g s E A r l y
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Explores the impact on medieval Mediterranean ru
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medicine of drugs introduced by the Arabs
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For more than one thousand years Arab medicine held sway in the ancient world, from the n
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shores of Spain in the West to China, India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the East. This book
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explores the impact of Greek (as well as Indian and Persian) medical heritage on the evolution
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of Arab medicine and pharmacology. M E Di tE r rA n E A n
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Focusing on the main substances introduced and traded by the Arabs in the medieval A

Mediterranean, the authors show how they enriched the existing inventory of drugs influenced
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by Galenic–Arab pharmacology. Further, they look at how these substances merged with the M E Di c i n E
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development and distribution of new technologies and industries that evolved in the Middle
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Ages, and with new trends, demands and fashions regarding spices, perfumes, ornaments and
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foodstuffs – some of which can be found in our modern-day food basket.
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Key Features iE
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• Assesses the assimilation of theoretical and practical Greek, Indian and Persian medicine D
into Arabic medical culture i
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• Reconstructs and presents a list of Materia Medica distributed by the Arabs as a result of
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their conquests
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• Tells the stories of thirty-seven new Arabic drugs within the context of their natural history
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• Includes thirty-five colour illustrations
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ZohAR AmAR is a Professor at the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology,
and Director of the Unit on the History of Medicine at Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
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EfRAIm LEv is a Professor at the Department of Israel Studies; and Head of The n Z
Interdisciplinary Center for the Broader Application of Genizah Research at the University d o
of Haifa, Israel. E h
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ISBN 978-0-7486-9781-6
edinburghuniversitypress.com
Cover image: Ortelius World Map, Abraham Ortelius, 1570 sourced from
Wikimedia Commons. ‘Medieval’ cargo ship, photograph by Zohar Amar.
Cover design: www.paulsmithdesign.com
Edinburgh StudiES in ClaSSi Cal iSlami C hiStory and CulturE
Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval
Mediterranean Medicine
Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture
Series Editor: Carole Hillenbrand
A particular feature of medieval Islamic civilisation was its wide horizons. In this
respect it differed profoundly from medieval Europe, which from the point of view
of geography, ethnicity and population was much smaller and narrower in its scope
and in its mindset. The Muslims fell heir not only to the Graeco-Roman world
of the Mediterranean, but also to that of the ancient Near East, to the empires
of Assyria, Babylon and the Persians – and beyond that, they were in frequent
contact with India and China to the east and with black Africa to the south. This
intellectual openness can be sensed in many interrelated fields of Muslim thought:
philosophy and theology, medicine and pharmacology, algebra and geometry,
astronomy and astrology, geography and the literature of marvels, ethnology and
sociology. It also impacted powerfully on trade and on the networks that made it
possible. Books in this series reflect this openness and cover a wide range of topics,
periods and geographical areas.
Titles in the series include:
Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval Mediterranean Medicine
Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev
The Medieval Western Maghrib: Cities, Patronage and Power
Amira K. Bennison
Keeping the Peace in Premodern Islam: Diplomacy under the Mamluk Sultanate, 1250–1517
Malika Dekkiche
Queens, Concubines and Eunuchs in Medieval Islam
Taef El-Azhari
Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library – The Ashrafīya Library
Catalogue
Konrad Hirschler
The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt: State and Society, 1173–1325
Nathan Hofer
Defining Anthropomorphism: The Challenge of Islamic Traditionalism
Livnat Holtzman
Lyrics of Life: Sa‘di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self
Fatemeh Keshavarz
A History of the True Balsam of Matarea
Marcus Milwright
Ruling from a Red Canopy: Political Authority in the Medieval Islamic World, From Anatolia to
South Asia
Colin P. Mitchell
Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves and the Sons of Slave Mothers
Elizabeth Urban
www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ESCIHC
Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval
Mediterranean Medicine
Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish
academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social
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© Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev, 2017
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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ISBN 978 0 7486 9781 6 (hardback)
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The right of Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003
(SI No. 2498).
Published with the support of the University of Edinburgh Scholarly Publishing
Initiatives Fund.
Contents
List of Plates vii
List of Tables ix
Preface x
Map: The Origin of the Main Medieval Arabian Drugs xiv
1 Introduction 1
Arab Attitude to Science 2
Translation of Greek Science into Arabic 3
Assimilation of Theoretical and Practical Medicine into Arab
Culture 5
Persian and Indian Medicine 6
Indian Medicinal Substances 9
Baghdad as an Intercultural Centre and the Triumph of the Galenic
Medical Legacy 10
The Commercial Aspect 13
2 Agricultural and Pharmaceutical Innovations: Milestones in
Research and Case Studies 48
Indian Pharmacology and Galeno-Arab Medicine 49
The ‘Agriculture Revolution’ and the Watson Thesis – Cucurbitaceae
Family as a Model 49
‘Crusader Plants’ 59
Greek Literature and the Physicians of Andalusia as a Model 60
Identification 71
The Suggested Model 72
vi | arabian drugs
3 ‘Arabian’ Substances 82
Drugs, Spices and Industrial Substances 83
Drugs (myrobalan, anacardium, dragon’s blood, tamarind,
bamboo, shampoo ginger, purging cassia) 83
Spices (clove, betel pepper, betel palm, turmeric, galingale,
nutmeg, perfumed cherry; other substances – Indian aconite,
zedoary, purging croton, cassia, berberry, fossil crab, sukk,
tarangabin, sandarus, turpeth, neem, cubeb pepper) 100
Industrial Substances (lacca, teac, sappan wood, warras) 120
Perfumes and Incenses (agarwood, camphor, ambergris,
sandalwood, jasmine, musk, screw pine) 129
Gemstones (corundum, diamond, bezoar-stone) 162
4 Discussion and Conclusions 228
Bibliography 237
Index of English Names 275
Index of Arabic Names 283
Index of Scientific Names 289
Plates
Between pages 82 and 83
All images are from the authors’ collection, or were taken by the authors
1 Fruits of two varieties of terminalia trees: yellow (Terminalia citrina)
and black (Terminalia chebula)
2 Fruits of the marking-nut tree (Semecarpus anacardium)
3 Resin and powder made out of dragon’s blood (Dracaena draco)
4 Fruits of tamarind tree (Tamarindus indica)
5 Grains of †abāshīr made of bamboo (Bambusa vulgaris)
6 Fruits of purging cassia (Cassia fistula)
7 Dry flower buds of clove tree (Eugenia caryophyllata)
8 Slices of betel palm nut on leaf of betel-pepper tree (Piper betel)
9 Betel palm nut (Areca catechu)
10 Betel palm tree in Sri Lanka
11 Rhizomes of turmeric (Curcuma longa) and powder made of them
12 Rhizomes of galingale (Alpinia galanga)
13 Fruits and leaf of nutmeg (Myristica fragrans)
14 Nutmeg seeds and peels of seeds (mace)
15 Seeds of perfumed cherry (Prunus mahaleb)
16 Seeds of purging croton (Croton tiglium)
17 Fruits and leaves of cassia (Cassia acutifolia)
18 Fruits of berberry (Berberis vulgaris)
19 Sugary secretion (grain) of the Persian manna plant (Alhagi
maurorum)
20 Grains of sandarus (Callitris quadrivalvis)
21 Fruits of cubeb pepper (Piper cubeba)
viii | arabian drugs
22 Stick-lacca – secretion of lacca (Laccifer lacca)
23 Wool fleeces dyed with lacca
24 Sawdust of sappan wood (Caesalpinia sappan)
25 Sappan wood hues (on wool fleeces)
26 Wool fleeces dyed with warras (Flemingia grahamiana)
27 Fragments of wood and bottle of agarwood oil (Aquilaria agallocha)
28 Leaves, white crystal cubes and bottle of camphor oil (Cinnamonum
camphora)
29 Sawdust and wood of red sandalwood (Pterocarpus santalinus)
30 Fragments of wood of white sandalwood (Santalum album)
31 Screw pine tree in Zanzibar (Pandanus odoratissimus)
32 Red corundum (ruby)
33 Raw white and transparent corundum
34 Raw blue and purple corundum
35 Raw diamonds
Tables
1.1 Comparison of some of the theoretical characteristics of Greek
and Indian medicine 11
2.1 List of drugs that were not mentioned in Dioscorides and Galen’s
book according to Arabic sources 66
3.1 Leading perfumes and incenses in the pre-Islamic world 132
3.2 Leading perfumes and incenses of the Islamic world 134
3.3 Names of the common gemstones in the Arabic literature 164
3.4 Rates of prices of gemstones in the medieval period 170
4.1 Greek vs Persian/Sanskrit names of drugs in various medical
books 230