Tales of Three Texts: The Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew

Medical Texts in MS 1649Tzvi Langermann

Philadelphia, September 2015

• Sa’ īd b. Hibat Allāh, al-Mughnī fī Tadbīr al-Amrāḍ (“Sufficient for Managing Illnesses”)

• Abū ‘Alī Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), al-Adwiya al-Qalbiyya (“Cardiac Drugs”)

• ‘Alī b. al-’Abbās al-Majūsī, al-Kāmil fī Ṣinā’at al- Ṭibb (“Complete Book in the Art of Medicine”)

Sa’ īd b. Hibat Allāh, al-Mughnī fī Tadbīr al- Amrāḍ (“Sufficient for Managing Illnesses”)

• Worked in Baghdad, d. 1101• al-Mughnī not translated into Hebrew or

Latin, published only recently, still unstudied.• A very practical handbook, covering the body

from head to toe, presenting (1) name and brief description of the ailment; (2) a brief etiology; (3) symptom(s); (4) a lengthy section describing several therapeutic approaches.

Fol. 238r, on pneumonia• Dhāt al-ri’a, pneumonia,

“a hot sore that develops in the lung”

• Etiology: due to pure blood or blood mixed with other matter

• Symptom: high fever, cough, difficulty in breathing … red cheeks and eyes …

• Treatment…

Marginal note in Latin—but there was no Latin translation of this text that I know of!

repelimonea-

Probably an overly literal translation of the Arabic term for pneumoniare(s)=dhātpelimonea=al-ri’a

Perhaps improvised!

COLOPHON (fol. 17b)

The book that is called al-

Mughnī…the composition of

the Sheikh and philosopher,

Abū al-Ḥasan Sa‘d bin Hibat

Allāh, the physician…

כמל אלכתאב אמלקב •

אלמג'ני פי תדביר

אלאמראץ' ומערפה" אלעלל

ואלאעראץ' תאליף אלשיך'

אלפילוסוף אבו אל חסן סעד

בן הבה" אללה בן אלחסן

אלטביב רחמה אללה באמר

אללה אמיר אלמומנין

The most insignificant copyist … David ben R. Shalom wrote it in his own hand. It was finished on Tuesday, the 13th of Kislev, in the year [5216 A.M.= 1456 C.E.] in Catania.I ask God to send forth to us our messiah; and that He liberate us from the nations,and repay us, and lead us to His holy homeland, Amen!

וכתב בכ'ט ידה אצגר אלנאסכין •

והו אלעפיף אלוקיר אלג'ליל

אלשריף ולד אלעז אלוקר דוד

בה"ר שלום זלה"ה וכאן אלפראג'

מנה יום אלתאלת פי י"ג יום מן

שהר כסלו שנת ואכל"ה מציד"י

לאלכליקה פי קטאניה ת"ו

אסאל מן אללה אן יבעת לנא •

מסיחנא ויפכנא מן אלאמם

וידינא ויסוקנא אלי מוטן קדסי

אנ"ס

• Catania lies on the island of Sicily; but during the fifteenth century it was politically part of Aragon, later of Spain. The handwriting of this manuscript is Sefardi, not Italian; and Jews emigrating from places such as Toledo, where Judaeo-Arabic culture lived on for centuries after the Reconquista , are the most likely candidates to have preserved the copying and study of Arabic texts.

• The messianic thrust at the end of the colophon, with the plea for liberation and “aliyah” to the Land of Israel, are striking.

• With all of this in mind, I might hazard a guess that David ben Shalom or his ancestors fled Aragon after the persecutions of 1391, and found refuge—which they suspected (and hoped) would be temporary on the island of Sicily.

Another, mysterious name beneath the colophon

והדא כתב צייא אלדין אלשיראזי

This was written [by] Ḍiyā’ al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī

• This name does not “sound Jewish” at all. It might be the name of the person who executed the copy in Arabic script from which Codex 1649 was transcribed.

Abū ‘Alī Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna)

• Born 980 in Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan), died 1038 in Hamadan (Iran)

• Author of al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb (“Canon of Medicine”), most important medical text between Galen and the modern period

• Wrote many other works in Arabic and Persian

al-Adwiya al- Qalbiyya (“Cardiac Drugs”)

• Medieval medicine not specialized• Opthalmology the one specialty (aside from

pharmacy, bonesetting, bloodletting, etc.)• Not a work on cardiology in the modern sense• Concerned with the heart as the locus of the

“spirit” which governs our emotions• Called Tafrīḥ al-Qulūb (“Making the Hearts

Happy”) in a late Persian translation

“Cardiac Drugs” in Hebrew

• Translated twice, once from the Arabic original, again from the Latin translation

• Stimulated two commentaries in Hebrew

The Spirit

• Spirit, not blood, flows in the arteries, which were called “vessels that beat” (with a rhythm, that is, the pulse), in order to distinguish them from the veins (“vessels that do not beat”)

• One cause for sadness, grief, depression, could be some (material) degeneration or defect of this spirit

• Avicenna presents long list of remedies, each acting in its own manner.

• These include aromatics: substances whose odors “nourish” the spirit, thereby restoring it to its healthy state and (hopefully) making the patient happy again.

• We will look at two interventions that are unique to Codex 1649, an interlinear correction and a marginal note in two languages.

Arabic: ‘anbar (ambergris)one of the aromatic “exhilirating” drugs

Hebrew should be עמבר(וב) but is mistakenly writtenמעבר(וב)Correction indicated by superscripted dots: one dot indicates first position, two dots, second position

Note also that Hebrew here has M where Arabic (and Hebrew usually) has N; but the Latin is “ambra”

Gloss in Latin and in Judaeo-Arabic

Gloss refers to Hebrew זנה , “nourishes”, a precise translation of the Arabic الغاذية.

Top gloss copies out the word used in the Latin translation of “Cardiac Drugs”, refocillant, from refocillo, “to revive”.

Bottom gloss explains refocillant in Judaeo-Arabic, using three verbs with similar meanings to get the message across: it means“ ,יעני תנאעש ותואפק ותקאויthat it reinvigorates, and brings into harmony, and strengthens”

• A very circuitous route—someone trying to understand the Hebrew word used to translate the Latin translation of a book written in Arabic.

• The Latin is consulted, but apparently the word was not understood, so it was explained in Judaeo-Arabic.

• But if the reader knew Arabic, why bother with the Hebrew and/or Latin translations? Probably because a copy of the Arabic was not to be had.

Alī b. al-’Abbās al-Majūsī, al-Kāmil fī Ṣinā’at al-Ṭibb (“Complete Book in the Art of Medicine”)

• Of Zoroastrian ancestry, practiced in Baghdad in the tenth century

• His book considered to be one of the best organized medical texts of the period

• Very well known among the Latins as “Haly Abbas”, less prominent in Jewish and Muslim circles, where he was eclipsed by Avicenna

• Of the three texts that make up this codex, al-Kamil probably saw the least day-to-day use

• Almost no annotations in the margins, usually the best indication that a book was being studied closely and/or consulted in practice

• There is, however, one interesting spelling that tells us something (I cannot be sure exactly what) about the copyist and/or readership

II, 8, 35, folio 209v contains a waṣāyā, an ethical will, and a mashūra, a piece of advice, to physicians “at the beginning of treatment, when deciding upon a regimen for diseases”. It is a handy encapsulation of the basic therapeutic approach, drawn from the works of both ancients and moderns.

The first piece of advice, which is to choose the least invasive form of intervention, comes from Hippocrates of Cos.

Hippocrates has a very strong presence in Arabic medical literature, where his name usually appears in what looks be an Arabicizied form, Abūqrāṭ. However, in codex 1649, 7 lines up on fol 209 v, it is spelled יפכראתיש—a Romance spelling, not the Arabic one.

Other Features of the Manuscript

• More pages in the binding?• Older pagination (א in upper left corner)• Glossaries on blank pages

Were pages from the manuscript used in the binding?

Folio 40 r is labeled א in upper left-hand corner, indicating that it once was the first page in a volume

How was this codex put together? This folio is part of Ibn Hibat Allah (the codex is missing the beginning, but the preceding quire is from “Cardiac Drugs”—the same copy of which parts are sewn in later.

Medical Glossaries

• Blank pages in manuscripts were often utilized to jot down glossaries, especially of materia medica

• Practicing physicians needed to know the name in the local dialect of the substances that were mentioned in the text, in Arabic or some other language

• In this glossary, the Arabic terms are clarified in Romance—some early version of Spanish (perhaps as spoken in Sicily)

Glossary on fol. 19a

דאר ציני סנאנמומי•Cinammon

Portuguese: Cinamomo

דאר פלפל פיפרי לורגי)?(•Pepper

CodaOn The Fascination and Uniqueness

• As an historian I am mostly interested in reading the texts found in manuscripts, rather than in the characteristics and special features of each manuscript.

• I would be happy to use printed books, and often so, when they are available and reliable.

• However, it certainly repays the effort to take a close look now and then at the manuscripts—which texts were bound together in a single codex; marginalia and writings that fill empty pages; colophons and more.

I end then with a big THANK YOU

to the University of Pennsylvania and its wonderful library for affording me this opportunity, and to all of you for coming to hear this talk.