Muwaffaq (medic)

Abu Mansur Muwaffaq (also Abu Mansur Muvaffak Harawi , Persian ابو منصور موفق هروی, DMG Abū Manṣūr Muwaffaq Harawī ), was a famous Persian doctor and pharmacologist of the 10th century . He worked in Herat , Iran , under the Samanid prince al-Malik al-Muzaffar al-Amir al-Sadid Abu Salih Mansur (I.) b. Nuh, who ruled from 961 to 976 .

He gained importance primarily through the creation of a treatise on the materia medica in Persian, to whose realization he traveled all over Persia and India , where he gathered the necessary information.

Between 965 and 977 , he wrote the book of the Remedies Directive ( Kitab al-Abnīya ʿan ḥaqā'iq al-adwīya ), the oldest prose work in modern Persian. As a list of medicinal products, it deals with 585 medicinal products, 466 of which come from plants, 75 from minerals and 44 from animals, divided into four groups, depending on their effects.

Abu Mansur distinguished between sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate , and seemed to have some knowledge of arsenic (III) oxide , cupric oxide , silica and antimony ; He was also familiar with the toxicological effects of copper and lead compounds, the depilatory effects of calcium oxide and the composition of plaster of paris and its surgical use.

Work edition and translation

• FR Seligmann (Ed.): Codex Vindobonensis sive medici abū Mansur Muwaffaq bin Ali Heratensis liber fundamentorum pharmacologiae. Vienna 1859. ÖNB: [1] , [2]
• Oh. Achundow: The pharmacological principles (Liber fundamentorum pharmacologiae) of Abu Mansur Muwaffaq Ibn Ali Harawi for the first time translated from the original text and provided with explanations. In: Rudolf Kobert (Ed.): Historical studies of the pharmacological institutes of the Imperial University of Dorpat. Volume 3, Halle 1893, pp. 137–414.

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• Adolf Fonahn: On the source study of Persian medicine . Leipzig 1910.
• C. Elgood In: An Anamnesis of Persia from the Beginnings to 1932. Cambridge University Press, London 1951, SV
• A. Muvaffak, I. Gurhan, U. Gunduz, N. Hasirci, In: J Drug Target . 13 (3), Apr 2005, pp. 151-159.
• A. Muvaffak, N. Hasirci: Adv Exp Med Biol. 534, 2003, pp. 309-325.
• George Sarton : Introduction to the History of Science. Baltimore 1927.
• Heinrich Schipperges †: Muwaffaq, abū Manṣūr. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1019.