Abu l-Abbas an-Nabati

Abu l-Abbas an-Nabati ( Ibn ar-Rumiya or al-ʿAshāb ; Arabic أبو العباس النباتي, DMG Abū l-ʿAbbās an-Nabātī ; * 1165 in Seville ; † 1239 ibid) was an Andalusian medic , pharmacist , botanist and theologian . His merit is the introduction of scientific methods in the field of materia medica by developing practices for the determination of healing herbs and plants that set new standards in the field of pharmaceutical research . The name an-Nabati ("the botanist"), by which he is best known and which is the basis of the Latinized form ( transliteration ), he earned in the context of his research.

origin

Since it is usually not easy to determine what the šuhra was with Arabic names , i.e. the part of the name by which the person in question is known, the maiden name an-Nabatis, despite the various interpretations with Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Mufarridsch bin Abdullah, was probably the right one. An-Nabati was a descendant of a freed slave and his occasionally used name Ibn ar-Rumiyya, or son of a Rhomean woman , was not culturally exceptional during the Byzantine era of Greece .

As a theologian initially a sympathizer of Maliki - school of Sunni Islam , he changed the teachings later than fanatic Ibn Hazm to Zahiris .

Live and act

An-Nabati's interests lay in the field of medicine and so, in contrast to his contemporaries, at a young age he devoted himself to the practical study of medicine , while his fellow students placed more emphasis on studying the theory of Dioscurides' materia medica . After extensive field studies in his homeland al-Andalus and the associated botanization, Nabati traveled on the way to Mecca through North Africa with a somewhat longer stay in Alexandria , the Levant and Iraq , thereby combining the canonical commandment of pilgrimage with his scientific interests by delving into the study of plants unknown in the Iberian Peninsula .

Back in Seville, he opened a pharmacy and first wrote a book about the experiences on his journey with the title ar-Rihla (The Journey), the original of which has unfortunately been lost. Only from the fragments that have been cited in the writings of other authors as text passages from this book, an approximate content of the book remained for posterity. Special credit is due to Abu Muhammad ibn al-Baitar , a disciple of an-Nabati, who later achieved fame himself. The work al-Jāmiʿ li-mufradāt al-adwiyya wa l-aghdhiyya , in which al-Baitar described the more than one hundred plants of Spain named by an-Nabati, of purely botanical character, ranked both among the great personalities of Arab botany. Another important work by Nabatis was a commentary on the famous Materia Medica by Dioscurides, in which he dealt critically with it. In scientific circles, in Arabic studies, there is no agreement on whether the commentary has also been lost or whether a corresponding anonymous copy comes from an-Nabati. With Maqala fi tarkib al-adwiyya he writes Ibn Abi Usaibia to another plant.

literature

• Toby Huff: The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-521-52994-8 .
• Eoghan Odinsson: Northern Lore . Createspace, Seattle, WA 2010, ISBN 1-4528-5143-3 .
• Bashar Saad, Omar Said: 3.3 . In: Greco-Arab and Islamic Herbal Medicine . John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex, England 2011.

proof

1. ^ "The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain", taken from al-Maqqarī ’s Nafhut Tibb min Ghusn al-Andalus al-Ratib wa Tarikh Lisan ad-Din Ibn al-Khatib . Translated by Pascual de Gayangos y Arce from copies in the British Museum , vol. 1, pg. 871. London: The Orientalist Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. Sold by WH Allen Ltd and M. Duprat.
2. ^ "Tradition and Perspectives of Diabetes Treatment in Greco-Arab and Islamic Medicine." Taken from Bioactive Food As Dietary Interventions for Diabetes , pg. 321. Eds. Ronald Ross Watson and Victor Preedy. Academic Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-12-397153-1
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Garcia Sanchez: Nabati, Ibn al-Rumiyya Abu l-'Abbas al-Nabati , Lexicon of Eminent Natural Scientists, 2007, Volume 3; Elsevier GmbH, Munich; Pp. 56-57; ISBN 3-8274-1883-6
4. ^ Toufic Fahd, "Botany and agriculture." Taken from Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, Volume 3: Technology, Alchemy and Life Sciences , pg. 819. Ed. Roshdi Rasheed. London : Routledge , 1996. ISBN 0415124123
5. ↑ ^{a b} "Ibn al-Rumiyya." Taken from the Encyclopaedia of Islam , fascicules 5-6, pg. 396. Eds. Clifford Edmund Bosworth , Bernard Lewis and Charles Pellat . Leiden: Brill , 1982. ISBN 9789004061163
6. ↑ Ignác Goldziher , The Zahiris: Their Doctrine and Their History , Brill Classics in Islam Volume 3, pg. 171. Brill Publishers: Boston, 2008
7. ↑ Salahuddin Khuda Bukhsh, Studies: Indian and Islamic , pg. 180. London: Routledge, 2001.
8. ↑ ^{a b} K.H. Batanouny, Wild Medicinal Plants in Egypt: An Inventory to Support Conservation and Sustainable Use , pg. 8 . In collaboration with S Abou Tabl, M. Shabana and F. Soliman and support of the Direction for Development and Cooperation , Bern . Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (Egypt), IUCN . Cairo : January 30th, 1999.
9. ↑ Emilia Calvo, "Ibn al-Baytar." Taken from the Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-western Cultures , pg. 404. Ed. H. Selin. New York City : Springer Publishing , 1997. ISBN 9780792340669
10. ^ The Book of Medicinal and Nutritional Terms at the World Digital Library . Last updated: March 16, 2012. Accessed June 3, 2013.
11. ↑ Martijn Theodoor Houtsma , Encyclopaedia of Islam , vol. 5, pg. 527. Leiden : Brill, 1993