Eighteenth-century epitome of al-Shirazi’s pharmacological encyclopedia

Shirazi, Najm al-Din Mahmud al-. Al-Hawi fi ilm al-tadawi: al maqalah al khamisah [The complete book of the art of healing: The fifth section].

€ 7,500.00

A working epitome of Najm al-Din Mahmud ibn Ilyas al-Shirazi’s medical encyclopedia, preserving the pharmacological fifth maqala in concise, practical form. Explicitly titled "al-Maqala al-khamsa fi dhikr al-aqrabadhin al-muhtawiya fi al-adwiya al-murakkaba" at the opening, with a concluding colophon, the text forms a deliberate recension rather than an excerpt, compressing the original fifty chapters into ten by merging, omitting, and selectively quoting or expanding passages.

Copied by the scribe Abdallah ibn Qasim on Saturday, 4 Muharram 1134 H (11 October 1721 CE), in a neat hand with rubrication; the portable format and clear layout indicate its intended use as ready reference. The manuscript exemplifies the early modern habit of isolating aqrabadhin sections from large encyclopedic works to produce usable pharmacopoeias for practice, here distilled into just 19 folios that reflect contemporary priorities in applied medicine. Al-Shirazi's work cites many earlier medical authorities such as Hippocrates and Galen, as well as various Arab writers. Thus, it provides a particularly good example of the rich intellectual milieu of 14th century Shiraz, and the combination of Persian, Greek, and Arab medicine available to physicians and students.

A compact, focused transmission of compound-drug recipes and related material from a widely cited medical compendium, preserving what an eighteenth-century practitioner deemed essential.