Abstract
This article introduces and presents a transcription and annotated translation of a medical text in
Ottoman Turkish authored by Mūsā Cālīnūs (d. after 1542). The treatise is entitled Risāla fī Tabā’i‘ al-adviya
va-isti‘mālihā (Treatise on the Natures of Medicines and Their Use). This article analyses the degrees of the
qualities (e.g., heat, cold, wetness, and dryness) of various materia medica and how, on that basis, certain
drugs affect, effect, and preserve health. There are three reasons why this brief, seemingly pedestrian text
merits more extensive study. First, it refers to the medieval Latin physicians Bernard de Gordon (fl. 1270-
1330) and Arnaldo di Villanova (1234-1310) for perhaps the first time in Turkish (and Islamic) literature.
Second, Mūsā Cālīnūs must have believed that there was an audience at Beyazid II’s court for the contents
of medical texts composed in Latin. Third, as Mūsā Cālīnūs is a probable conduit through which information
about the astronomy of Islamic societies could have reached the Veneto around 1500, his interest in the
contents of Latin medical texts meant that he was a scholarly intermediary who carried information in at
least two directions.
Keywords
Beyazid II medicine Arnaldo di Villanova pharmacology al-Kindī Ibn RushdShare
Details
- Authors: Robert Morrison, Prof., Bowdoin College
- DOI: dx.doi.org/10.12658/Nazariyat.3.1.M0034en
- Year: 2016 (November) / Volume: 3 / Issue: 1
- Page: 77-136
- Full Text
- Other Languages:
-
Türkçe
- 25 Views
- Back to Issue