About this book
As the title indicates, The Key to Medicine and a Guide for Students was an introduction to medicine, intended for students. After extolling the virtues of having a profession in general and of medicine in particular, Ibn Hindu (d. 423/1032) discusses various disciplines that a medical student should be familiar with, including a lengthy digression into philosophy and logic. He then deals with matters specifically medical, devoting separate sections to anatomy, diseases, pulse, and names of medicinal substances.
The book was written in the early 11th century by a physician who was also the author of a treatise on philosophy and famous for his Arabic poetry – his anthology is said to have amounted to 15,000 couplets or more! For a medieval work, Ibn Hindu’s book is refreshingly meticulous in its analysis and modern in its outlook.
About the translator
Aida Tibi was born in Tulkarm, Palestine and studied in Beirut before earning a BA (Hons) in Classical Arabic at the University of London (1968), a MA in Classical Arabic in 1970 from the same institution, and a DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford (1975). Her doctoral thesis focussed on a 12th-century manuscript about famous women in early Islam, with the Arabic text published by al-Dar al-‘arabiyya li’l-kitab (Libya/Tunisia) in 1978 under the title al-Hada’iq al-Ghanna’ fi akhbar al-nisa’. She served as Lecturer in Arabic and Islamic History at the University of Tripoli, Libya, and is now living in Oxford with her husband, Dr Amin Tibi.
About the reviewer
Emilie Savage-Smith has recently retired as Professor of the History of Islamic Science at the University of Oxford. She is currently preparing a two-volume annotated catalogue of the Arabic medical manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. Recent publications include an electronic edition and translation (with Y. Rapoport) of an early 11th-century Arabic cosmology titled Medieval Islamic Views of the Cosmos: The Book of Curiosities; Medieval Islamic Medicine (with P.E. Pormann; Edinburgh 2007), awarded the 2008 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies; A Descriptive Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts at St John’s College, Oxford (Oxford 2005); Medieval Views of the Cosmos (with E. Edson; Oxford 2004); and Magic and Divination in Early Islam (Aldershot 2004).
Details
Format: Hardback
Page extent:c320pp
Size: 240 x 168mm
Imprint: Garnet Publishing
Series: Great Books of Islamic Civilization
ISBN: 978-1-85964-236-8
Published: January 2010
