An Arabic Compendium of Galen’s De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus (ms. Huntington 600/2, ff. 15r-35v)

Abstract

The summaria alexandrinorum (known as ǧawāmiʿ al-iskandarāniyyīn in Arabic) are summaries of Galenic works that survive only in Hebrew or Arabic versions. Traditionally, these translations have been attributed to Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (9^th c.) and have been linked to the teaching of medicine in 6^th- and 7^th-century Alexandria. In this article we present the edition of one of these ǧawāmiʿ al-iskandarāniyyīn, namely the Arabic compendium of Galen’s De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus preserved in the Huntington 600/2 manuscript of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. With the publication of this unpublished text we intend to contribute to a better understanding of the nature and origin of this type of texts, as well as to facilitate their consultation and study by other specialists. We add a brief introduction on the summaria alexandrinorum and their importance in the teaching and transmission of medicine in the Middle Ages, followed by a series of notes on De simpl. med. fac. The source manuscript is then described in both form and content, and the editing criteria are established. The most common uses and characteristics of the Galenic pharmacopoeia have also been extracted from the text. In order to provide a rigorous edition, the text has been checked against the complete translation of De simpl. med. fac. into Arabic, as well as against other Andalusian treatises of simple drugs.