SIGNED ABU SA'ID 'ABD AL-RAHMAN BIN ABI'L-FAWARIS BIN GHANIM BIN MUHAMMAD AL-KAZARUNI, IRAN, DATED SAFAR AH 590/JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1194 AD

Complete Book of the Medical Art, Arabic manuscript on buff paper, 194ff. each with 25-26ll. of flowing black naskh, important words and phrases highlighted in red, catchwords, occasional early marginal notes, first folio lacking, colophon signed and dated, final folio with later owners' notes, in worn brown morocco, paper covered doublures, the first covered with notes in Hebrew Folio 9 7/8 x 6 ½in. (25.1 x 16.5cm.)

Al-Majusi’s Kitab Kamil al-Sana’ah al-Tibbiya is a comprehensive medical encyclopaedia which is also sometimes known as al-Kitab al-Malaki, ‘The Royal Book’. It was dedicated to the Buyid ruler, ‘Adud al-Dawlah Fana-Khosraw (r. AH 338-72/949-83 AD). Al-Majusi was of Persian extraction, and it is possible that his activities were restricted to Shiraz, never actually leaving Iran. His forebearers are recorded as being Zorastrian although he himself appears to have been a Muslim. The Bodleian Library in Oxford has seven copies of the work, the earliest one dated AH 556/1160-61 AD, less than fifty years earlier than ours (Emilie Savage-Smith, A New Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, volume I, Medicine, Oxford, 2011, pp.193-206, no.50).

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