Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica

Biruni's Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica (, ), known in English as "Al-Biruni's Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica", is the last work of the Persian polymath Abu-Reyhan Biruni (973-1048). It survives in Arabic in a single uncorrected manuscript and is a major source for the pharmacology of the medieval East. The work describes more than a thousand drugs of plant, animal and mineral origin, recording their names in a wide range of languages and dialects. Unusually for its period, it contains no dedication or panegyric, and Al-Biruni nowhere states his purpose in writing it directly.

Character of the work

The Ṣaydana differs fundamentally from conventional pharmacological handbooks such as the second book of Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine. Its primary concern is the identification of the drug source rather than information on its properties and effects: what the substance looks like, and what the marks of its purity and quality are. Al-Biruni attached great importance to the names of drug sources in different languages and dialects, because in the medical and scientific writing of his time foreign drug names were so numerous that many physicians and pharmacists did not know what they actually denoted. The problem was compounded where a single drug bore different names in different places, or where one name had been applied to several different substances, frequently leading to serious misunderstandings.

Recognising the significance of this problem, Al-Biruni assembled and explained some 4,500 names of plants, animals, minerals and their products in Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Indian languages, Persian, Khwarezmian, Sogdian, Turkic and others, thereby taking a new step in systematising the pharmaceutical terminology of his day. These synonyms remain valuable to modern researchers, allowing many medicinal plants and other substances to be identified precisely. In numerous cases Al-Biruni records local names current among the inhabitants of particular districts and even individual towns in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and India, from which the variety of remedies produced and used in these regions can be reconstructed. Some of this material is also of interest to historians and to specialists in Iranian and Indian dialectology.

In compiling the Ṣaydana Al-Biruni drew on a large number of works produced over some five centuries by scholars of East and West. Around 250 authors are named in the book, among them naturalists, philosophers, historians, geographers, philologists, poets and travellers alongside physicians. Many are otherwise obscure or known only by name, their works no longer extant; the quotations from such sources, and the information about their authors, are consequently of considerable value for the history of science and culture. Al-Biruni's notes on the geographical origins of particular raw drug materials are likewise of interest.

Contents

The book consists of a substantial preface followed by the pharmacopoeia proper, in which each drug is treated under a separate heading. The preface comprises an introduction and five chapters. In the introduction Al-Biruni defines the terms ṣaydana (pharmacy) and ṣaydanānī (pharmacist, druggist), discusses the problems and tasks of the discipline, and situates it among the medical sciences.

The first chapter advances the proposition that the Indian, Persian and Turkic sound ch becomes ṣ through Arabization, supported by a series of examples. Al-Biruni then argues that ṣaydanānī arose through the Arabization of chandanānī (sandalwood merchant), itself derived from the Indian chandan (sandalwood tree).

The second chapter opens by dividing drugs into simple and compound, and explains the origin of the Arabic term ʿaqāqīr (sing. ʿaqqār), used for simple drugs. It then treats the response of the human body to foods, drugs and poisons. Al-Biruni notes that there are physicians in India who treat with poison, and relates an anecdote by way of illustration. The chapter closes with the observation that aphorisms on medicine comparable to those of Hippocrates circulate among the Indians; Al-Biruni gives no specifics, ending with the remark that recounting what he had seen among them would draw the discussion out too far.

The third chapter examines the substitution of one drug material for another and the deficiencies in the prescriptions of earlier and later authorities concerning such substitutes. Discussing the role of different peoples in the advance of learning, Al-Biruni singles out the contribution of the ancient Greeks; among the peoples of the East he regards only the Indians as serious in science, while setting out the circumstances that impeded contact and cultural exchange with them.

In the fourth chapter Al-Biruni describes his own relationship to Arabic and Persian. He names Khwarezmian as his mother tongue and considers himself a newcomer to both Arabic and Persian. In his view only Arabic is suited to scholarly purposes, Persian serving, in his words, for royal tales and bedtime stories.

The fifth chapter records that Al-Biruni had been interested in the Greek names of plants in his youth. He writes that in those years a Greek lived in Khwarezm from whom he would ask the Greek names of plants and note them down, presumably in Arabic script. In this connection he discusses the inadequacy of the Arabic script, which cannot always render non-Arabic words correctly, and refers to the errors of Arabic translators of Greek authors and to the poor condition of the manuscripts. He also names some of the sources he used. In the same chapter Al-Biruni states expressly that he will generally not address the properties of drugs, and closes by explaining the alphabetical arrangement of his entries. The entries themselves follow roughly this pattern: the heading gives the name of the drug as it is customary in Arabic medical books; Greek, Syriac, Persian, Indian and other names follow; the Arabic name is often then explained by means of a line of verse; the external appearance of the substance is described on the authority of Greek and Eastern writers; its quality and place of origin are noted; and the entry concludes with its substitutes.

Manuscripts and editions

The Arabic original was long unknown in the West, and the work was accessible to orientalists only through its medieval Persian translation until Zeki Velidi Togan discovered the Arabic text at Bursa in 1926.

Henry Beveridge identified a manuscript of the Persian translation at Lucknow in 1889; it is now held as Or. 5849. The translator is named in several places as Abū Bakr ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿUthmān al-Asfar al-Kāsānī, though he most often calls himself simply Abū Bakr ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿUthmān.

Principal editions and translations:

• A critical edition of the Arabic text by Abbas Zaryab, based on several manuscripts and on the Persian translation, Tehran, 1991. Zaryab's substantial introduction discusses the work, its manuscripts and the method of the edition; the volume closes with indexes of plants, animals, minerals, books, persons, places and peoples, scientific names, and Greek terms.
• A non-critical edition of the Arabic text with English translation and commentary by Hakim Mohammed Said and Rana Ehsan Elahie, Karachi, 1973; a second volume containing an introduction, commentary and evaluation was prepared by Sami K. Hamarneh. The English translation was made from the Baghdad manuscript.
• Muqaddimat al-Ṣaydana, with German translation and notes by Max Meyerhof, Berlin, 1932.
• A Russian translation by Ubaydullah I. Karimov, with a detailed introduction and extensive notes, Tashkent, 1973.
• A Persian translation by Bagher Mozaffarzadeh, made from Karimov's Russian version, Tehran, 2004.
• A semi-critical edition of Kāsānī's medieval Persian translation-recension, by Manouchehr Sotoudeh and Iraj Afshar, Tehran, 1991.

Languages recorded in the work

Al-Biruni draws drug names from a wide range of languages and dialects, among them: