Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 January 2014
The article considers a brief catechistic presentation of a Galenic medical doctrine, the critical days, by the 9th century translator and thinker, Qusṭā ibn Lūqā (d. 912/3), found in a manuscript in Iran. The piece is first shown to have been derived from Galen's treatise on the critical days. Then, it is discussed section by section, in commentary form, to elucidate the medical doctrines Qusṭā propounds. Lastly, the piece is compared with an earlier attempt, by al-Kindī (d. c. 870), to describe the critical days mathematically. The various medical doctrines behind the treatise are discussed, as are the varying approaches to scientific method. The article concludes with contrasting the a priori mathematical scientific method of al-Kindī with the a posteriori empirical method of Galen/Qusṭā, and offers suggestions about the chronologies of the appearances of these doctrines and texts in Arabic. A transcription of the Arabic text is appended.
Cet article examine une brève présentation catéchétique de la doctrine médicale galénique des jours critiques composée par le traducteur et penseur du ixe siècle Qusṭā ibn Lūqā (m. 912/3) et que l'on a trouvée dans un manuscrit iranien. Tout d'abord, on démontre que cette œuvre a été composée à partir du traité de Galien sur les jours critiques. Ensuite, on la discute section par section, sous forme de commentaire, pour élucider les doctrines médicales proposées par Qusṭā. Enfin, l'œuvre est comparée avec une tentative antérieure, celle d'al-Kindī (m. c. 870), de décrire les jours critiques d'une façon mathématique. On discute les diverses doctrines présentes à l'arrière-plan du traité, comme les diverses approches de la méthode scientifique. L'article se conclut en mettant en contraste la méthode scientifique mathématique et a priori d'al-Kindī avec la méthode empirique et a posteriori de Galien et Qusṭā, et il fait des suggestions concernant la chronologie des occurrences de ces doctrines et de ces textes en langue arabe. Une transcription du texte arabe est donnée en appendice.
1 Tehran, MS 6188 (11th century). I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions, as well as to P. Bearman for her careful reading and to Prof. Hasnaoui for his suggestions on the Arabic text.
2 See Nutton, V., Ancient Medicine (London, 2004)Google Scholar, pp. 92 and 102. Nutton observes that the humoral paradigm is described in terms of analogies from cooking, which would have been familiar to a typical Greek housewife: cooking, mixing fluids, intervention in a cooking process, etc.
3 Introduction to: Galen, De diebus decretoriis, From Greek into Arabic. A Critical Edition, with Translation and Commentary, and Historical Introduction of Isḥāq, Ḥunayn ibn, Kitāb ayyām al-buḥrān, ed. Cooper, G. M. (London, 2011), pp. 37–42Google Scholar.
4 E.g. al-Fārābī (d. 950), Abū Bišr Mattā (d. 940), and Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī (d. 974).
5 “Costas (or Constantinos), son of Loukas.” In the Introduction to his edition of Qusṭā's translation of Diophantus's Arithmeticae, R. Rashed carefully reviewed the evidence for Qusṭā's dates. While the birth date is less certain, he finds the evidence for the death date in Armenia to be more conclusive, and concludes that the period of Qusṭā's greatest activity as a translator was during the reign of al-Muʿtamid (r. 870–892). Diophante, Les Arithmétiques, Tome 3: Livre IV, ed. R. Rashed (Paris, 1984), pp. xvi–xxii.
6 Sezgin, F., Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 3 (Leiden, 1970)Google Scholar, lists 51 of Qusṭā's medical works on various subjects. The Masāʾil is no. 49, p. 273. See also Ullmann, M., Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden, 1970), pp. 126–8Google Scholar.
7 For a discussion of Qusṭā's translation of the Arithmeticae of Diophantus, see: Rashed, R., “Greek into Arabic: transmission and translation”, in Montgomery, J. E. (ed.), Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy, From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank (Leuven, 2006), pp. 182–7Google Scholar. See also id., The Development of Arabic Mathematics: between Arithmetic and Algebra, trans. Armstrong, A. F. W. (Dordrecht, 1994), pp. 206–7Google Scholar.
8 Recent studies of some of his extant medical works include Qusṭā Ibn Lūqā's Medical Regime for The Pilgrims To Mecca: The Risāla fī Tadbīr Safar al-Ḥajj, ed. and trans. Bos, G. (Leiden, 1992)Google Scholar; On Numbness: A Book on Numbness, its Kinds, Causes and Treatment According to the Opinion of Galen and Hippocrates, ed. Ambjörn, L. (Stockholm, 2000)Google Scholar; and On Purgative Drugs and Purgation, ed. and trans. Ambjörn, L. (Frankfurt, 2004)Google Scholar.
9 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, ed. G. Flügel, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1872), vol. 1, p. 295; al-Qiftī, , Taʾrīḫ al-ḥukamāʾ, ed. Lippert, J. (Leipzig, 1903), p. 292Google Scholar; and Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ, ed. A. Müller, 2 vols. (Königsberg, 1884), vol. 1, p. 244.
10 Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ, 1, 244.
11 Qusṭā was well known enough as a physician to have his medical writings excerpted in al-Ḥāwī of al-Rāzī (d. 313/925 or 323/935). See J. Wilcox, “The transmission and influence of Qusṭā ibn Lūqā's ‘On the Difference between Spirit and Soul’,” Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1985, p. 12, and the quotation by Ibn al-Ǧazzār (d. c. 368/979). See also Harvey, E. R., “Qusṭā ibn Lūqā al-Baʿalabakkī”, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York, 1975), vol. 11, pp. 244–6Google Scholar, p. 244.
12 Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī (d. 925).
13 Abū Ǧaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Abī Ḫālid ibn al-Ǧazzār (d. c. 980).
14 Sezgin, Geschichte, 3, 270–4.
15 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 1, 243, l. 18. See also Gutas, D., Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th–10th Centuries) (London, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 138ff.
16 Wilcox (“Transmission and influence,” p. 13, n. 24) observes that Qusṭā mentions Ḥunayn in his treatise “On the Divinity of Man” in a way that suggests that they were acquainted. She further notes that Qusṭā is reported to have collaborated with Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn on a translation of On the Moving Sphere of Autolycus. This means Qusṭā was acquainted with Ḥunayn's son, at least.
17 Ibid., p. 15, n. 33. D. Pingree, “Banū Monajjem,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica (New York, 1989), vol. 3, p. 716. Fleischhammer, M., “Munadjdjim, Banū ‘l-,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1993), vol. 7, pp. 558–61Google Scholar; and Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, p. 128. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 1, 143–4 reports their genealogy back to Sasanian times (see family stemma in Pingree, op. cit.).
18 P. Nwyia inferred, on the basis of the differences in the authors’ styles, that Qusṭā's response was written from the safety of his new home in Armenia, whereas Ḥunayn's much terser response reflects his caution after his prior bitter experience with theological controversy. Une correspondance islamo-chrétienne entre Ibn al-Munaǧǧim, Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq et Qusṭā Ibn Lūqā, trans. Nwyia, P. (Turnhout, 1981), pp. 538–43Google Scholar.
19 Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ, 1, 244.
20 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 1, 295 (Kitāb ayyām al-buḥrān). This title is the same as Ḥunayn's translation of Galen's Critical Days.
21 Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ, 1, 245. The qāḍī al-quḍāt was the top of the Abbasid judicial administration, who presented candidates for qāḍī-ships to the caliph for approval. See Tyan, E., “Ḳāḍī,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1978), vol. 4, pp. 373–4Google Scholar.
22 Daiber, H., “Masāʾil wa-adjwiba,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1991), vol. 6, pp. 636–39Google Scholar.
23 See Sezgin, Geschichte, 3, 249–51. An English translation of this work that appeared in 1980 (Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, Questions on Medicine for Scholars. Translated into English with a preface and historical note by Paul Ghalioungui, from a critical edition by Moussa, Galal M., of the Ninth-Century Arabic text, Al-Masāʾil fī al-Ṭibb lil-Mutaʿallimīn [Cairo, 1980]Google Scholar) was poorly reviewed by: Hamarneh, S. K., “Review of: Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, Questions on Medicine for Scholars. Translated into English with a preface and historical note by Paul Ghalioungui, from a critical edition by Galal M. Moussa, of the Ninth-Century Arabic text, Al-Masāʾil fī al-Ṭibb lil-Mutaʿallimīn, Cairo: 1980”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 38, 4 (1983): 475Google Scholar.
24 Sezgin, Geschichte, 3, 206. See Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʿIbādī, Le livre des questions sur l'oeil de Honain ibn Ishaq, ed. and trans. Sbath, Paul and Meyerhof, Max, vol. 36, Mémoires de l'Institut d'Égypte (Cairo, 1938)Google Scholar.
25 Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, p. 117.
26 Risāla fī aḥwāl al-bāh wa-asbābihi.
27 Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ, 1, 244.
28 For a general discussion of the genre of masāʾil wa-aǧwiba (“questions and answers”), see Akasoy, A. A., Philosophie und Mystik in der späten Almohadenzeit: Die Sizilianischen Fragen des Ibn Sabʿīn (Leiden, 2006), pp. 113–18Google Scholar. See also Daiber, “Masāʾil wa-adjwiba,” where many examples of the use of the form in Arabic are provided, especially from the literature of theological debate.
29 Galen, De diebus decretoriis libri iii, ed. C. G. Kühn (Leipzig, 1825), vol. 9, pp. 769–941. See now, however, the recent Arabic edition of this text: Cooper, Galen, De diebus decretoriis, From Greek into Arabic.
30 Cooper, Galen, De diebus decretoriis, From Greek into Arabic, pp. 39–40.
31 See Cooper, G. M., “Numbers, prognosis, and healing: Galen on medical theory,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 90, 2 (2004): 45–60Google Scholar.
32 References to my edition is by both the standard Kühn numbers, and pages of the 2011 edition.
33 K 9: 886.17–887.5 (2011 ed., 300–1); also K 9: 890.1–2 (2011 ed., 304–5).
34 E.g., K 9: 769.7 (2011 ed., 96–7).
35 E.g., K 9: 769.2 (2011 ed., 96–7).
36 E.g., K 9: 774.5 (2011 ed., 104–5).
37 E.g., K 9: 774.6 (2011 ed., 104–5).
38 E.g., K 9: 851.2 (2011 ed., 244–5).
39 E.g., K 9: 850.17 (2011 ed., 244–5).
40 See K 9: 901.1–7 (2011 ed., 320–1).
41 For a discussion of the place of astrology among the intellectual disciplines, and a call to employ the more appropriate terminology natural philosophy rather than science (which renders astrology as “pseudo-science” and obscures its true significance in the history of human thought), see Hendrix, S. E., “Natural philosophy or science in premodern epistemic regimes? The case of the astrology of Albert the Great and Galileo Galilei,” Teorie Vedy / Theory of Science, 33 (2011): 111–32Google Scholar.
42 An explicitly astrological-medical work, the [pseudo-Galen], Prognostica de decubitu ex mathematica scientia, was attributed to Galen: see Nutton, Ancient Medicine, p. 267; also, Cumont, F., “Les prognostica de decubitu attribués à Galien,” Bull. Inst. Hist. Belge Rome, xv (1935): 119–31Google Scholar; and Weinstock, S., “The author of Ps.-Galen's Prognostica de decubitu,” Classical Quarterly, 42 (1948): 41–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Cf. Cooper, G. M., “Galen and astrology: a mésalliance?” Early Science and Medicine, 16, 2 (2011): 120–46CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, pp. 144–5. Although there is no direct connection with Qusṭā's Masāʾil, Ibn Sīnā's Qānūn shows how Galenic medicine might look, purged of astrology. The Qānūn discusses crises and critical days throughout, and devotes a significant portion of Book IV to the critical days, including the canonical Galenic list, but – significantly – without any of Galen's astrological discussion that appears in the Critical Days. Ibn Sīnā rejected judicial astrology as well as medical astrology. Ibn Sīnā's views about the knowledge claims of astrology are discussed in McGinnis, J., Avicenna (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 231. See A. F. Mehren, “Vues d'Avicenne sur l'astrologie et sur le rapport de la responsabilité humaine avec le destin,” Muséon, 3 (1884): 383–403; Avicenne, , Réfutation de l'astrologie, ed. and trans. Michot, Y. (Beirut-Paris, 2006)Google Scholar.
44 Galen himself at the end of Book II of the Critical Days suggests that Book III is intended for the serious student of medicine; e.g., K 9: 900.1–3 (2011 ed., 320–1), and elsewhere.
45 Hippocrates, “Regimen in Acute Diseases,” in Hippocrates, Volume II, ed. W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, 1923; repr. 1992), p. 67; ed. É. Littré (Paris, 1840), vol. 2, pp. 232–3. See also Galen, Critical Days, K 9: 835.13 (2011 ed., 216).
46 See Galen, , Method of Medicine, ed. and trans. Johnston, I. and Horsley, G. H. R. (Cambridge, MA, 2011), pp. 392–5Google Scholar.
47 K 9: 773.8 (2011 ed., 102 n. 34).
48 The Arabic text as it appears in an appendix to my edition must be emended, by the insertion of bi-dūni, from: yakūnu bi-inḥilālin faqaṭ bi-buḥrānin to yakūnu bi-inḥilālin faqaṭ bi-dūni buḥrānin.
49 See Langholf, V., Medical Theories in Hippocrates: Early Texts and the ‘Epidemics’ (Berlin, 1990), pp. 79–81Google Scholar.
50 K 9: 795.18; 796.17 (2011 ed., 144–5 and Comm., 415).
51 K 9: 797.11–13 (2011 ed., 146–7 and Comm., 416).
52 See discussion in 2011 ed., Comm., 401–2.
53 Durling, R. J., A Dictionary of Medical Terms in Galen (Leiden, 1993), pp. 65–6Google Scholar.
54 See Langholf, Medical Theories in Hippocrates, p. 126. Epidemics I (2.632–631.1, ed. Littré) discusses this. See Langholf, op. cit., p. 79.
55 Payne-Smith, R., Thesaurus Syriacus (2 volumes) (Oxford, 1879–1901), pp. 506–7Google Scholar. See also ibid., p. 41. The term buḥrān already had a medical meaning in Syriac: “trial, test, or crisis of an illness.” (Ibid., p. 347.)
56 Ibid., p. 211.
57 K 9: 769.1–770.6 (2011 ed., 96–7).
58 This view is similar to ancient Egyptian medicine, which conceived of most diseases as the consequences of food residues putrefying inside the body. See Nutton, Ancient Medicine, p. 42.
59 In Hippocrates Volume IV, ed. Goold, G. P. (Cambridge, MA, 1931), pp. 2–41Google Scholar; Littré ed. (Paris, 1849), vol. 6, pp. 32–69. See also Nutton, Ancient Medicine, p. 82.
60 Kühn 1: 9 (Kühn, 1.1, 509–694); Galen, , De temperamentis libri III, ed. Helmreich, G. (Leipzig, 1904; repr. 1969)Google Scholar.
61 Galen, De diebus decretoriis libri iii, ed. Kühn, 9, 769–941. For the Crises: Galen, De crisibus, in ibid., pp. 550–768; Galen, , Peri Kriseon: Überlieferung und Text, ed. Alexanderson, B. (Göteborg, 1967)Google Scholar.
62 Nutton, Ancient Medicine, p. 116.
63 See Nutton, Ancient Medicine, p. 78.
64 Langholf, Medical Theories in Hippocrates, pp. 79–135.
65 See also Nutton, Ancient Medicine, pp. 78, 81.
66 See Galen, De crisibus, ed. Alexanderson, pp. 76–9, 80–85, 93, 99–100.
67 Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, ed. M. T. May, p. 733, n. 18. May, however, neither discusses crises, nor explains how a crisis fits in the overall context of the De usu partium. A missed opportunity, since the crisis offers an excellent example of how nature functions with a purpose, in the manner Galen argues throughout that treatise.
68 K 9: 827.11 (2011 ed., 200–1, 398–9).
69 K 9: 824.13–826.10, 828.1–17 (2011 ed., 169–69, 202–3).
70 K 9: 886.17, 888.15, 890.1, 891.13. See also the discussion in Langholf, Medical Theories in Hippocrates, pp. 79–135.
71 K 9: 876.9–17 (2011 ed., 284–5; Comm. 429, 466).
72 Nutton, Ancient Medicine, pp. 26 and 147.
73 Stearns, J. K., Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean (Baltimore, 2011)Google Scholar, pp. 14 seq. and 106.
74 The best documented introduction of the practice of quarantine was the Venetian response to the Black Death (1348): incoming ships were reportedly isolated for forty days. Roemer, M. I., National Health Systems of the World: The Issues (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, p. 70. Also, Stearns, Infectious Ideas, pp. 94 and 142.
75 K 9: 817.9–818.1 (2011 ed., 182–3).
76 Neugebauer, O., “Astronomical fragments in Galen's On Seven-Month Children,” Rivista Degli Studi Orientali 24 (1949): 92–4Google Scholar; Weisser, U., “Thabit ibn Qurra's Epitome of Galen's Book on Seven-Month Children,” Journal for the History of Arabic Science, 7, 1–2 (1983): 141–4Google Scholar.
77 The Greek analogue to this is ἁρμονία (“framework, arrangement”).
78 K 9: 901.8 (2011 ed., 320–1).
79 K 9: 825.6–828.17 (2011 ed., 196–202).
80 Cf. K 9: 916.4 (2011 ed., 346–47).
81 See 2011 ed., 72–5, for an extended discussion of the implications of this musical symbolism for Galen's medical science.
82 It seems odd that this harmonic connection was not preserved in translation, since the association of music with healing was always a concern of physicians in the Islamic world. See e.g., Burnett, C., “Spiritual medicine: music and healing in Islam and its influence in Western medicine,” in Gouk, P. (ed.), Musical Healing in Cultural Contexts (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 85–91Google Scholar. Also, Pormann, P. E., and Savage-Smith, E., Medieval Islamic Medicine (Washington, D. C., 2007)Google Scholar, pp. 48, 50, and 135. It seems, however, that the conceptual connection between medicine and music was much deeper than via a single word.
83 K 916.4 (2011 ed., 346–7).
84 This unusual method of counting is discussed in K 9: 850.16–851.11. Four- and seven-day periods, as noted earlier, are counted sometimes as separate, sometimes as overlapping.
85 The original text read “thirty-seventh,” which cannot be part of the series of multiples of seven, starting from twenty. A scribe must have misread rābiʿ (“fourth”) for sābiʿ (“seventh”), which differ by only one letter.
86 On the usefulness of dividing the timeline of illness into regular segments, see Nutton, Ancient Medicine, pp. 193; 239, and Leith, D., “The diatritus and therapy in Graeco-Roman medicine,” The Classical Quarterly (New Series), 58, no. 2 (2008): 581–600CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
87 See K 9: 932.13–15 (2011 ed., Introduction, 12, 33, 64, 75; 372 n. 1127; Comm. 468–9, 496).
88 See K 9: 817.9–818.1 (2011 ed., 182–3).
89 Probably an error in the manuscript, for this day is redundant and out of sequence.
90 See, for example, K 9: 789.10, 822.17, 825.9, 826.9, 827.7, 827.13, 828.5, 829.12, 869.4, 916.7 (2011 ed., 132–5, 192–3, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202–3, 204–5, 270–3, 346–7).
91 The manuscript has ‘blameworthiness’ here, but logically we should expect ‘praiseworthiness’.
92 That is, in order of praiseworthiness.
93 These terms are defined: K 9: 776.6–777.1 (2011 ed., 108–11).
94 K 9: 786.17–787.3 (2011 ed., 128–9).
95 K 9: 876.9 (2011 ed., 284–5).
96 This clarifying phrase was added by the present author to follow his Arabic edition of the Galenic Critical Days.
97 Galen, , On Medical Experience: First Edition of the Arabic Version with English Translation and Notes, ed. Walzer, R. (Oxford, 1944)Google Scholar, p. 127.
98 K 9: 850.16–851.19, 937.13–938.15 (2011 ed., 244–5, 380–3).
99 K 9: 932.15 (2011 ed., 372–3). The absence of this figure in Qusṭā's text supports the idea that the Masāʾil was intended for the practicing physician, for whom the list alone is sufficent, rather than the physician-philosopher, who desires a deeper understanding of the causes of the critical days.
100 A useful biographical and bibliographical discussion is found in: al-Kindī, , The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, ed. and trans. Adamson, P. and Pormann, P. E. (Oxford, 2012), pp. xlix–lxxvGoogle Scholar.
101 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 255–61; Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ, 1, 211–12; Sezgin, Geschichte, 3, 244–47. Transcription and German translation in Klein-Franke, F., “Die Ursachen der Krisen bei akuten Krankheiten: Eine wiederentdeckte Schrift al-Kindi's,” Israel Oriental Studies, 5 (1975): 161–88Google Scholar. Klein-Franke's version of the doctrine was improved upon by a later scholar: Weisser, U., “Mondphasen und Krisen nach al-Kindi,” Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, 66 (1982): 390–5Google Scholar. This work is listed as no. 124 in al-Kindī, Philosophical Works, ed. Adamson and Pormann, p. lv.
102 Cooper, Galen, De diebus decretoriis (2011 ed., 25–37; 529–40).
103 Gutas states that the Greek philosophical tradition “died.” See Gutas, D., “Geometry and the rebirth of philosophy in Arabic with al-Kindī,” in Arnzen, R. and Thielmann, J. (eds.), Words, Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea: Studies on the Sources, Contents and Influences of Islamic Civilization and Arabic Philosophy and Science (Leuven, 2004)Google Scholar, p. 195. However, a recent dissertation takes issue with that view, showing in detail how the Syriac intellectual tradition provided a continuity between “Alexandria and Baghdad.” See J. B. V. Tannous, “Syria between Byzantium and Islam: Making incommensurables speak,” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2010. See also Adamson and Pormann's discussion “The birth of philosophy” in al-Kindī, Philosophical Works, pp. xxiii–xxxii.
104 Adamson, P., al-Kindī (Oxford, 2007)Google Scholar, pp. 11 and 160–80, where al-Kindī's arithmetic of pharmacy and the geometry of vision are discussed. This is a technique modeled after Euclid's Elements. See Gutas, D., “Origins in Baghdad,” in Pasnau, R. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 11–25Google Scholar; here, 21–2, and Endress, G., “The language of demonstration: translating science and the formation of terminology in Arabic philosophy and science,” Early Science and Medicine, 7, 3 (2002): 231–54, pp. 240–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gutas, “Geometry and the rebirth of philosophy,” pp. 197–9.
105 A similar project of al-Kindī's, using a mathematical scheme from Plato and applying it to physical reality, is described in the treatise “On Why the Ancients Related the Five Geometric Shapes to the Elements”, in al-Kindī, Philosophical Works, ed. Adamson and Pormann, pp. 194–205.
106 Galen on the Therapeutic Method, Books and I and II, trans. Hankinson, R. J. (Oxford, 1991), pp. 4–16Google Scholar (K 9: 10.5–30); and Method of Medicine, ed. and trans. I. Johnston and G. H. R. Horsley, pp. 8–49.
107 K 9: 934.10–935.3 (2011 ed., 374–7).
108 Al-Kindī, fols. 23r–24r; Klein-Franke, “Die Ursachen der Krisen,” pp. 171–3.
109 Al-Kindī, fol. 23v; Klein-Franke, “Die Ursachen der Krisen”, p. 172. For a discussion of similar texts in this tradition in Hebrew, see Langermann, Y. T., “Studies in medieval Hebrew pythagoreanism: translation and notes to Nicomachus' arithmological texts,” Micrologus, 9 (2000): 230–6Google Scholar.
110 Al-Kindī, fols. 23v–24r; Klein-Franke, “Die Ursachen der Krisen”, pp. 172–3.
111 I.e., 1 + 3 = 4 = 22; 1 + 3 + 5 = 9 = 32, etc.
112 I.e., 2 + 4 = 6 = 2 × 3; 2 + 4 + 6 = 12 = 3 × 4, etc.
113 It must be noted that al-Kindī was one of the founders of the discipline of astrology in Arabic. See Adamson, Al-Kindī, pp. 194–206, and ibid., “Abū Maʿshar, al-Kindī and the philosophical defense of astrology,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales, 69, 2 (2001): 245–70Google Scholar. [Albumasar], al-Balḫī, Abū Maʿšar, Liber introductorii maioris ad scientiam judicorum astrorum, ed. Lemay, R. (Naples, 1995–6)Google Scholar.
114 Al-Kindī, fol. 24v; Klein-Franke, “Die Ursachen der Krisen,” p. 173. I have found no such reference to odd-numbered critical days in Hippocrates, other than the list of critical days in which the odd days appear more frequently.
115 Al-Kindī, fol. 24r-v; Klein-Franke, “Die Ursachen der Krisen,” pp. 173–4. For a discussion of how the moon and other planets affect the terrestrial sphere, see al-Kindī's treatise, “On the Proximate Agent Cause of Generation and Corruption,” in al-Kindī, Philosophical Works, ed. Adamson and Pormann, pp. 153–72.
116 Al-Kindī, fol. 24r-v; Klein-Franke, “Die Ursachen der Krisen,” pp. 173–4. Al-Kindī takes the month as an ideal 28 days, but Galen takes into account its varying length between 29 and 30 days. See K 9: 907.14–908.3 (2011 ed., 332–5).
117 Al-Kindī, fol. 24r; Klein-Franke, “Die Ursachen der Krisen,” p. 173.
118 Al-Kindī, fol. 24v; Klein-Franke, “Die Ursachen der Krisen,” p. 174.
119 Average: 27.321661 days (27 d 7 h 43 min 11.5 s). Source: US Naval Observatory.
120 Average: 29.530589 days (29 d 12 h 44 min 2.9 s). Source: US Naval Observatory.
121 K 9: 929.3–931.17, (2011 ed., 62–5, 75, 366–71).
122 Greek edition: Diophantus, Arithmeticorum libri sex, ed. P. Tannery (Leipzig, 1893; repr. Stuttgart, 1974). Arabic edition: Diophante, Les Arithmétiques, Tome 3: Livre IV, ed. Rashed.
123 Pingree, “Abū Maʿšar al-Balkhī,” p. 34. On the form madḫal (“entrance; introduction”), see E. W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, 2 vols. (London and Edinburgh, 1863), vol. 1, pp. 860–61. It is a common noun of place: Wright, W., A Grammar of the Arabic Language, 3rd edn, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 124–5Google Scholar.
124 Adamson, “Abū Maʿshar, al-Kindī” pp. 251–2.
125 Ibid., p. 247, and Abū Maʿšar, al-Madḫal, I.2, L 110–11. References to the al-Madḫal are to book (qawl), section (faṣl), and line number in Lemay's edition. This system is borrowed from Adamson (p. 246, n. 4).
126 Al-Madḫal I.5, L 912ff.
127 Al-Madḫal I.2, L 271–73; 288–99.
128 Al-Madḫal I.5, L 1012–13.
129 Al-Madḫal I.5, L 1041.
130 See e.g. Critical Days sects. 840.6, 841.9, and 848.3 (2011 ed., 226–7; 228–9; and 238-39); and De methodo medendi, Book 3, 159.14–17.
131 Lemay, R., Abū Maʿshar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century (Beirut, 1962)Google Scholar.
132 See the discussion in Gutas, D., “Medical theory and scientific method in the age of Avicenna,” in Pormann, P. E. (ed.), Islamic Medical and Scientific Tradition: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies, vol. 1 (London and New York, 2011), pp. 33–46Google Scholar, and P. Adamson, “Knowledge of universals and particulars in the Baghdad School,” in ibid., pp. 68–91.
133 Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, pp. 43–5.
134 See, e.g. Qānūn (Rome, 1593). On obstructions: Book I, Part 4, Chapter 25, pp. 108–9. On crises and critical days: Book 4, Part 2, Thesis 3, Chapter 8, pp. 41–62.
135 See, for example, D. Jacquart, “Theory, everyday practice, and three fifteenth-century physicians,” Osiris, 2nd Series, vol. 6, Renaissance Medical Learning: Evolution of a Tradition (1990): 146–8: The physician Jacques Despars advocated ignoring the astral influences in cases of plague, and instead considering proximate factors of contagion.
136 A. Z. Iskandar, “Ar-Rāzī, the clinical physician (Ar-Rāzī aṭ-ṭabīb al-iklīnīkī),” in Islamic Medical and Scientific Tradition, 1, 208–10.
137 Iskandar, “Ar-Rāzī, the clinical physician”, pp. 210–21.
138 It is hoped that further light will be shed upon the question of influence and development by the efforts of the University of Warwick Epidemics Project, which aims to edit and carefully examine the Arabic Galen's commentaries on the Hippocratic Epidemics. See also Pormann, P. E., “Case notes and clinicians: Galen's Commentary on the Hippocratic Epidemics in the Arabic tradition,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 18 (2008): 247–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
139 Iskandar, “Ar-Rāzī, the clinical physician.” See also: Iskandar, A. Z., “Al-Razi,” in Young, M. J. L., Latham, J. D. and Serjeant, R. B. (eds.), Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 370–7Google Scholar.
140 Millán, C. Álvarez, “Graeco-Roman case histories and their influence on medieval Islamic clinical accounts,” Social History of Medicine, 12, 1 (1999): 19–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., “Galen's influence on Razi's clinical accounts,” in Greppin, J. A. C., Savage-Smith, E. and Gueriguian, J. L. (eds.), The Diffusion of Greco-Roman Medicine into the Middle East and the Caucasus (Delmar, NY, 1999), pp. 57–71Google Scholar; and id., “Practice versus theory: tenth-century case histories from the Islamic Middle East,” Social History of Medicine, 13, 2 (2000): 293–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
141 Millán, C. Álvarez, “The case history in Medieval Islamic medical literature: Tajārib and Mujarrabāt as source,” Medical History, 54, 2 (2010): 195–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
142 Although an Arabic edition of the Kitāb al-Taǧārib has been published by Ḫālid Ḥarbī, Álvarez Millán describes it as unreliable (“The case history in Medieval Islamic medical literature,” p. 200, n. 24). The Kitāb al-Ḥāwī is found in an edition by Ḫān, M. ʿAbd al-Muʿayyad (Hyderabad, 1963)Google Scholar.
143 See Adamson, Al-Kindī, pp. 194–200.
144 Qusṭā devised a new mathematical terminology in the translation of the Arithmeticae of Diophantus, but in that case the existing terminology was inferior. Rashed, “Greek into Arabic,” p. 186.
145 Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, pp. 138–9.
146 Endress, G., “The circle of al-Kindi,” in Endress, G. and Kruk, R. (eds.), The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism: Studies on the Transmission of Greek Philosophy and Sciences (Leiden, 1997), pp. 43–76Google Scholar.
147 2011 ed., 82.
148 Dimitri Gutas and George Saliba have provided two different, but not mutually exclusive paradigms for the causes and motivations behind the translations. See Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture; Saliba, G., Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, 2007)Google Scholar. For discussion of how their views elucidate the Arabic context of Galen's Critical Days, see Cooper (2011 ed., Introduction, pp. 43–9). And, more recently, see Gutas, D., and van Bladel, K., “Bayt al-Ḥikma,” in Krämer, G., Matringe, D., Nawas, J. and Rowson, E. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE (Leiden: Brill Online, 2012)Google Scholar, which presents the scant evidence for the character and existence of the Bayt al-Ḥikma, and dismantles most modern reconstructions of it.
149 See above, n. 36. Avicenna actually demoted medicine from being a true theoretical science, and placed it along with (natural) astrology in his scheme of the intellectual disciplines. This was due to its conjectural character. See Gutas, “Medical theory,” pp. 146–9.
1 ببحران : بغير بحران Q. Editor supplied “without”, since the meaning requires it. bi-ġayri is consistent with the usage in Question 4.
2 المنتقلة The last word on a given page repeated in Q.
3 عن الحادّة : sup. Q1.
4 العشرين : According to modern standard Arabic usage, this should be العشرون, as all of the other numbers in this passage should have their nominative forms (الثلاثون الأربعون، الستّون). Rather than intervene too much in the text, these numbers have been left as transcribed.
5 الرابع : corr. ed. :السابع Q.
6 [وفي العاشر] : secl. ed.
7 كثيرا : corr. ed كثير Q.
8 الإحمد : corr. ed. : الذمّ : Q. Logically we should expect this pairing of opposites.
9 الأمر: The last word on a given page is repeated in Q.
10 أيّام : According to modern usage, we should expect الأيّام.
11 واليوم الأربعين: add. ed. (Something is missing here. Supplied from the Galenic critical days tradition).
12 العشرين : As in Question 6, in accord with modern usage, this should be العشرون, as all of the other numbers in this passage should have their nominative forms (الثلاثون الأربعون، الستّون).
13 يعدّ : corr. ed. يعد : Q.
14 أوّل The last word on a given page is repeated in Q.
