The Book of Commentary

Jonah Ibn Janāḥ

First Half of the 11th Century

O cultivated and artful one, may God through you brighten the paths of wisdom, and illuminate through your clear ambition the paths of knowledge. May He count you among the grateful to Him for the understanding He has bestowed, and among those that praise Him for having endowed you with knowledge. You have charged me, may God prolong your existence…

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The Book of Commentary (Kitāb al-talkhīṣ) is a pharmacological dictionary with some 830 entries, as well as many ethical and philosophical excurses. In it, Ibn Janāḥ describes how different plants may be used for medicinal benefit. Dedicating his book to an unnamed coreligionist in Saragossa, Ibn Janāḥ utilized both Greek and Arabic sources (all in the Arabic language), including the medical writings of Isaac al-Isrā’īlī (855–932), as well as some Romance vernacular sources. This work was popular among later Andalusi physicians and beyond. The Muslim biographer Sā‘id al-Andalusī (d. 1069) emphasized Ibn Janāḥ’s prominence as a physician.

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Intellectual Culture in the Early Medieval World

6th to 12th Century

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