abulkasem alchemistry distillation islamic

#ABULKASEM ALCHEMISTRY DISTILLATION ISLAMIC MANUALS#

His manual formed the basis of many subsequent manuals on medicinal substances, including that written in the 18th-century by Muhammad Husayn ibn Muhammad Hadi al-`Aqili al-`Alavi, a practitioner in India and grandson of a well-known Indian practitioner. His Arabic treatise, The Comprehensive Book on Materia Medica and Foodstuffs ( Kitab al-Jami` li-mufradat al-adwiyah wa-al-aghdhiyah), was an alphabetical guide to over 1400 simples taken from his own observations as well as from 150 written sources that he names. The largest and most popular of materia medica manuals was that by Ibn al-Baytar, who was born in Malaga in the kingdom of Granada towards the end of the 12th century and became `Chief of Botanists' in Cairo in the first half of the 13th century.

Formularies were often composed as larger independent collections of recipes, and some were written for specific use in hospitals.

Medical encyclopedias usually had one chapter on materia medicaĪnd another on recipes for compound remedies. Numerous Arabic and Persian treatises were subsequently written on medicaments. Knowledge of medicinal substances was based initially upon the approximately 500 substances described in the 1st century AD by Dioscorides in his Greek treatise on materia medica. The preparation and use of medicinal drugs was a topic that also had its own specialized literature. In later Arabic works, medicinals were used that came from as far afield as China, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, southern India, and Africa. The book explores the issue from a different geopolitical perspective, namely not focusing on a singular recipient and several points of distribution, namely the metropolitan centres of science, medicine, and technology, but on regions that are both recipients and distributors and provides new perspectives based on newly investigated material for historical studies on the cross scientific exchanges between different parts of the world.In the field of materia medica and its applications, Islamic writers surpassed their earlier models, primarily because their broader geographic horizons brought them into contact with drugs unknown to earlier peoples, such as camphor, musk, sal ammoniac, and senna. The book argues that the process of transmission of knowledge whether theoretical or practical was not a simple and one-way process from the donor to the receiver as it is often admitted, but a multi-dimensional and complex cultural process of selection and transformation where ancient scientific and local traditions and elements. While human mobility played a significant role in the exchange of knowledge, translating European books into local languages helped the introduction of new knowledge in mathematical, physical and natural sciences from central Europe to its periphery and to the Middle East and Asian cultures. A number of papers investigate the printing, gunpowder, guncasting, shipbuilding, metallurgical and drilling technologies while others deal with mapping techniques, the adoption of written calculation and mechanical clocks as well as the use of medical techniques such as pulse taking and electrotherapy. This book explores the various historical and cultural aspects of scientific, medical and technical exchanges that occurred between central Europe and Asia.

Abulkasem alchemistry distillation islamic