Die Dioskurides-Erklärung des Ibn al-Baiṭār

Even for the knowledgeable, the tasks get vitiated by the blemishes of fate or the gods, or the human nature. It is not impossible to divine what is meant here, but how much more idiomatically it could have been done: Things go wrong, even for the wise, because of the iniquities of fate and of men. The bibliographical control of source works is almost non-existent, although this is not always as disadvantageous as it might seem, since the citations are often from well-known Sanskrit texts which exist in standard vulgate editions. But to cite two lines of Sanskrit as being from the Mahabharata, without giving any further indication of where the text appears in that vast epic is unhelpful in the extreme (see p. 4). Similar cases abound (e.g., the unlocated citation from the Ramayana on p. 244). This laxness undoes whatever usefulness the book might have had as a bibliographical aid. So what remains? A source book ofIndian medicine is a very mixed bag. Browsing through the sections inevitably throws up some interesting and useful material. There are many provocative gobbets of Sanskirt medical lore to be found here. Where chapter and verse are given, this can actually contribute to scholarship. In many cases, however, the texts have to remain interesting curios, referable only to the present book. The roman text in the work is poorly printed in a sans serif typeface throughout, which makes it very hard on the eye. In 1955 a previously unreported manuscript of an unknown commentary to Dioscorides was found in Mekka and bears the title: Tafs7r Kitab Diyusqr7duis. Dietrich provides the Arabic text, sample plates of the manuscript, a German translation, full notes, and indices in the Greek alphabet, Latin scientific names of plants, and Arabic transliterated plant names together with transliterations of Greek and other language names. His introduction is thorough. Each of Ibn al-Baitar's (Baytir in the DSB) entries are referenced to sixteen sources, including Galen, Ibn culul, and Dietrich's previous text, translation and notes to an anonymous Arabic commentary on Dioscorides produced in the late twelfth century (Dioscurides triumphans, Gottingen, 1988). Ibn al-Baitar travelled extensively from the city of his birth, Malaga, in 1204 ACE (according to Dietrich) and died in Damascus in 1248, having travelled throughout North Africa and parts of Asia Minor. Throughout his commentary, Ibn al-Baitar wrote of habitats that he had seen and of nomenclature from …