Early, unpublished manuscript translation of a medical text by a 13th century author from Al-Andalus

[Ibn Khalsun, Muhammad ibn Yusuf]. [Kitab al-aghdiya fi hifz al-sihha - On Nutrition and the Preservation of Health]. Traicté des choses non naturelles.

€ 45,000.00

A hitherto unknown French translation of an Arabic medical and philosophical text by a 13th century author from Al-Andalus: part of the first sections of the third chapter from the "Kitab al-Aghdiya", or the "Book of Food and the Preservation of Health", by Ibn Khalsun (ca. 1203-88). This chapter discusses general hygiene and personal health, that is to say, the body and spirit in their entirety. The present manuscript fragment is entitled "Traicté des choses non naturelles" ("Treatise on matters not natural"), meaning the things necessary for human life that are part of the external, material world, such as air, food and drink, including paragraphs on wine and sleep. It provides no information as to its source, but there was at the time no French edition of the work, and this would appear to be an entirely original, albeit unfinished, effort at translating an Arabic manuscript. The first published French translation was that included with the critical edition published in Damascus in 1996.

According to the Andalusian scholar Ibn al-Khatib (1313-74), Ibn Khalsun was originally from Rueda in Spain and lived in Malaga and Granada where he was part of the Nasrid ruler Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Yusuf's court (1272-1302). This is his only recorded work on medicine.

Some worming to the wide margins. Binding slightly rubbed at extremeties. Provenance: from the library of the French writer Jules Claretie (handwritten note dated 1919); subsequently owned by Dr. René-Albert Gutmann (1885-1981), and acquired from his heirs.