Medical Israiliyyat ? Ancient Islamic Medical Traditions Transcribed into the Hebrew Alphabet

MS Vatican, Ebr. 397, ff. 126r-131v, contains medical texts in Arabic, written in Hebrew characters. The texts preserved in these fragments are closely related to a compilation of very early Islamic medical traditions preserved uniquely (or so it appears at the present state of our knowledge) in a manuscript kept in Rabat, Morocco, which carries the title Mukhtaṣar fī 'l-ṭibb (Epitome of Medicine) and is ascribed to an Andalusian, ^⊂Abd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb (d. 853).¹ However, the Vatican text is not a transcription of the Mukhtaṣar. It is, as we shall see, either a transcription made from ^⊂Abd al-Malik's complete book, of which the epitome alone survives, or, as I tend to think, of a different, though closely related compilation, which very likely served as one of ^⊂Abd al-Malik's sources.² Thus in the Vatican manuscript we have a transcription of some of the earliest Arabic medical lore. The texts are rare; in some cases the transcribed version is the only copy identified so far.

Though this is reason enough to publish a description of these materials (and, eventually, the texts in their entirety), there are additional reasons for doing so. Several of the passages are ascribed to well-known transmitters of Israā^⊃īliyyāt, ancient Islamic traditions that are said to derive from Jewish sources. As far as I know, no one has called attention to medical Isrā^⊃īliyyāt. Moreover, the science (including those passages that are not Isrā^⊃īliyyāf) is clearly Hellenistic and some of the doctrines are unusual and noteworthy. We may mention the division of the body into four quarters, each with a pair of organs, one hot and one cold; and a theory of four basic constituents—earth, water, soul, and spirit—that match the four humors. (Fuller discussions of these and other theories will be presented below.) Finally, we have found closely related texts, ascribed in part to transmitters of Isrā^⊃īliyyāt, in the Risāla of Masīḥ bin Ḥakam. In a note published in an earlier volume of Aleph, I argued that MasīḤ was a member of the Isawiyya, a Jewish-Christian sect, and noted the transmission of his writings to al-Andalus.³ Thus there is some frail link between portions of these fragments and ancient Jewish lore, which may have been preserved by sectarians. We must hasten to add that these connections would not necessarily have been known to the copyist of the Vatican manuscript.

This note will comprise two sections, an introduction and a conspectus. In the introduction we present the Vatican manuscript and sketch out the salient historical contexts. Then we present a detailed conspectus of the transcribed texts, juxtaposing them at times with closely related texts and noting specific issues related to each section.

Introduction

The texts in MS Vatican 397 were copied in a cursive script by David b. Solomon ibn ^⊃Aqosh in Murcia in 1384. They are collected under two titles. The first, the longer and historically more interesting, begins al-Kalām fī khilqat 'l-insān wa-tarkībihi ("Discourse upon the creation [or: constitution] of man and his composition"). As we shall see, there exists a substantial, variegated, and largely unstudied batch of texts, most of them early, carrying variations of the title khalq (or khilqat) 'l-insān. Khilqah bears the double meaning of "creation" and "constitution"; khalq and khulq (which look alike in an unvocalized Arabic text) carry the first and second of these meanings, respectively. However, judging from the contents of the texts that go under these titles, and especially the texts that we propose to examine here, it seems that both meanings are intended: man's basic physical, psychic, emotional, and moral characteristics are described in part by means of narratives of the creation of Adam.

Our text differs significantly from all the other specimens that I have been able to examine, save one: the corresponding chapter in Masīḥ's book. On f. 130r there begins a new topic, bāb f...