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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Creator Bio

Jonah Ibn Janāḥ

ca. 985/90–ca. 1055

Abū al-Walīd Marwān Jonah Ibn Janāḥ al-Isrā’īlī was a philologist, grammarian, and lexicographer probably born in Córdoba or nearby Lucena. He was educated in Lucena and around 1012 made a name for himself with his Book of Supplement, in which he criticized and “supplemented” the writings of the tenth-century grammarian Judah Ḥayyūj, precipitating a polemic with Ḥayyūj’s students. Ibn Janāḥ’s later Book of Minute Research, which includes both the Book of Variegated Flower Beds and the Book of [Hebrew] Roots, analyzes the Bible using methods similar to those employed in the study of Arabic and the Qur’ān. His works remained influential in the Hebrew translations by Judah Ibn Tibbon (ca. 1120–after 1190).

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