Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 230

where his pupil was Ibn Abī Uaybia,
with whom he collected plants. He died
here in 646/1248.
His main works are: (1) al-Mu ∞ nī fi
'l-awiya al-mufrada , dedicated to al-Malik
al-āli Na ¡ m al-Dīn Ayyūb, in which
he gives the appropriate simples for each
illness. (2) al- ⁄ āmi li-mufradāt al-adwiya wa
'l-a ∞£ iya , with the same dedication. In
this work the author lists in alphabetical
order some 1400 simples, animal, veg-
etable and mineral, basing it on his own
observations and also on over 150 author-
ities including al-Rāzī, Ibn Sīnā, al-Idrīsī
and al- fi āfiī. Meyerhof and Sobhy
consider that the ⁄ āmi of Ibn al-Bayār
is merely plagiarized from the pharmaco-
poeia of al- fi āfiī with the addition of
material obtained from the works of his
teachers. Apart from this doubtful state-
ment (particularly since the mediaeval
idea of intellectual honesty was different
from that of today), it should be men-
tioned that, of the total number of simples
studied, about a thousand were already
known to Greek authors. This work had
a considerable influence both outside and
within the Islamic world, for example on
the Armenian Amir Dowlat. (3) Mīzān
al-abīb . (4) Risāla fi 'l-a ∞£ iya wa 'l-adwiya .
(5) Maāla fi 'l-līmūn . (6) Commentary on
Dioscorides, of which a manuscript has
been found and which contains a list of
550 drugs which appear in the first four
topics of Dioscorides; the technical terms
are frequently accompanied by their Latin
and Berber equivalents.

remedy or a poison. In accordance with
Greek ideas, Muslim pharmacologists dis-
tinguished between simple drugs, adwiya
mufrada ( φάρμακα ἁπλᾶ and compound
drugs, adwiya murakkaba φ. σύνθετα ).
According to their origin, the adwiya were
divided into vegetable ( nabātiyya ), animal
( ayawāniyya ) and mineral ( madiniyya ).
Like medicine in general, Muslim phar-
macology depends on Greek learning. An
element of Persian tradition is also revealed
in the pharmacological nomenclature. In
many cases these Persian names of plants
and drugs, some of them still in use may
date from the time of the celebrated
medical school of ⁄ undīsābūr, where
Greek science flourished on Persian soil.
This learning began to exercise an effec-
tive influence on the Muslims in the year
148/765, when the caliph Manūr sum-
moned to attend him the chief physician
of the hospital of ⁄ undīsābūr, ⁄ ur ¡ īs of
the family of Bu ¶ tya ª ū. Greek pharma-
cological learning was transmitted through
Syriac translations of the fundamental
works of Dioscorides, Galen, Oribasius
and Paul of Aegina.
The Dioscoridean idea, clearly expressed
by the great Iranian scientist al-Bīrūnī in
his pharmacological work cited below,
that, theoretically, every plant had some
medicinal virtue, whether actually known
or not, caused pharmacological writers
to include in their works plant descrip-
tions which had a purely botanical inter-
est, derived especially from Abū anīfa
al-Dīnawarī. There is thus in Muslim tra-
dition no clear difference between materia
medica , or works on al-Adwiya al-Mufrada
etc., and botany, Nabāt .
According to the autobibliographi-
cal risāla of unayn b. Isā, the first
five maālāt of the Book of Simple Drugs of
Galen were translated into Syriac, rather
unsatisfactorily, by Yūsuf al- ‡ ūrī, later
on by Ayyūb ( Job of Edessa, about A.D.

( J. Vernet)

Medicaments

(Ar. adwiya , pl. of dawā ) every sub-
stance which may affect the constitution
of the human body, every drug used as a