A Hospital Handbook for the Community: Evidence for the Extensive Use of Ibn Abi 'l-Bayan's al-Dustur al-bimaristani by the Jewish Practitioners of Medieval Cairo

Lev, Efraim; Chipman, Leigh; Niessen, Friedrich

doi:10.1093/jss/fgm046

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Like his master, he too became a court physician, treating Saladin's successor al-'Ādil. He was the teacher of the medical biographer Ibn Abī Us ̣aybi'a and the director of the Nās ̣irī hospital in Cairo, for whose use he composed his handbook, which comprises 12 chapters on various formulations of compound medicines (Sbath, 1932(Sbath, -1933Lev, Chipman and Niessen 2008). The second book, aimed at the community pharmacist rather than the hospital, is Minhāj al-dukkān wa-dustūr al-a'yān fī a'māl wa-tarākīb al-adwiya al-nāfi'a li-'l-insān ('The management of the [pharmacist's] shop and the rule for the notables on the preparation and composition of medicines beneficial to man') by Abū For most of the medieval period, Jewish physicians seem to have been accepted more in North Africa, Egypt, and the Levant than in Iraq and Iran.…”

Section: Jewish Physicians and Pharmacistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Jewish Presence in Arabic Writings on Medicine and Pharmacology During the Medieval Period

Chipman

2013

Religion Compass

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The Jewish connection to medicine is longstanding and ongoing, as has been the interest in the history of medicine among Jews. This paper will attempt to go beyond the 'Great Men' school of historiography, to discuss a number of aspects of the Jewish presence in the fields of pharmacy and medicine in the Arabophone world in the medieval period, and Jews' interactions with the Islamic majority. The emphasis will be on pharmacy and medicine in the Galenic tradition. After an overview of Greco-Arabic medicine, I will discuss the contribution of Jewish physicians and pharmacists to medical writings in Arabic and that of the Cairo Genizah documents to our knowledge of the social history of medicine in the medieval Middle East.

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Section: Jewish Physicians and Pharmacistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Jewish Presence in Arabic Writings on Medicine and Pharmacology During the Medieval Period

Chipman

2013

Religion Compass

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“…Several parts of this book have been identified among Genizah fragments. 55 A much bigger book, Minhāj al-dukkān fī al-adwiya al-nāfi a lil-insān (The shop guide -or How to run the [apothecary's] shop), 56 was written in 1259-60 by Abū al-Munā al-Kūhīn al-At . t .ā r. With time, this book became even more popular and was printed several times between 1870 and 2003.…”

Section: Medical and Pharmaceutical Books As Literary Sources Of Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medieval Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic Prescriptions (and the edition of three medical prescriptions)

Lev¹

2008

JRAS

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The literature on medicine in medieval Muslim countries in general and in Egypt in particular is vast and detailed. Yet study and assessment of the practical aspects of medicine in the Mediterranean society of the Middle Ages requires examination of authentic, practical medical knowledge. At present this can be extracted mainly from the prescriptions found in the Cairo Genizah; these supply a different and valuable dimension. On the importance and the potential of research into the medical aspects of the Genizah documents, mainly prescriptions, Goitein wrote in 1971 that “these prescriptions have to be examined by experts in the history of medicine”.

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Mediators between Theoretical and Practical Medieval Knowledge: Medical Notebooks from the Cairo Genizah and their Significance

Lev

2013

Med. Hist.

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This article presents a plethora of fragments from the medical notebooks found in the Cairo Genizah that comprise a unique source of historical data for scholarly study and for a better understanding of the ways in which medieval medical knowledge in Egypt was transferred from theory to practice and vice versa. These documents provide the most direct evidence we have for preferred practical medical recipes because they record the choices of medical practitioners in medieval Cairo. Since the language most commonly used in them was Judaeo-Arabic, they were evidently written by Jews. The medical genre in the notebooks was primarily pharmacopoeic, consisting of apparently original recipes for the treatment of various diseases. There are also a few notebooks on materia medica. The subject matter of the Genizah medical notebooks shows that they were mostly of an eclectic nature, i.e. the writers had probably learnt about these treatments and recipes from their teachers, applied them at the hospitals where they worked or copied them from the books they read. Foremost among the subjects dealt with were eye diseases, followed by skin diseases, coughs and colds, dentistry and oral hygiene, and gynaecological conditions. The writers of the Genizah notebooks apparently recorded the practical medical knowledge they wished to preserve for their future use as amateur physicians, students, traditional healers or professional practitioners.

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A Hospital Handbook for the Community: Evidence for the Extensive Use of Ibn Abi 'l-Bayan's al-Dustur al-bimaristani by the Jewish Practitioners of Medieval Cairo

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

The Jewish Presence in Arabic Writings on Medicine and Pharmacology During the Medieval Period

The Jewish Presence in Arabic Writings on Medicine and Pharmacology During the Medieval Period

Medieval Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic Prescriptions (and the edition of three medical prescriptions)

Mediators between Theoretical and Practical Medieval Knowledge: Medical Notebooks from the Cairo Genizah and their Significance

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