The Book of Musta‘īnī

The Book of Musta‘īnī (Kitāb Musta‘īnī) consists of a mostly alphabetical list of 704 medicinal components, identified in Arabic and presented in tabular format. The author names the ingredients in a startling variety of languages, including Berber, Greek, Latin, Persian, the Spanish vernacular, and Syriac, although not in a systematic way. This Judeo-Arabic fragment survived in the Cairo Geniza. (The Kitāb Musta‘īnī also survives in several Arabic manuscripts, as the work remained useful for centuries.) Although the author originally included five columns in his table, this copyist reduced it to three. The text is presented here in paragraphs instead of columns. The first line gives the name of the substance (here in italics) and its qualities; the second paragraph provides its synonyms and then its benefits; the third, if there is one, gives an acceptable substitute for it. Unbracketed ellipses indicate lacunae in the manuscript.