Between East and West: A Jewish Doctor from Spain

Mediterranean Historical Review

Volumn 10, Issue 1-2, 1995, Pages 49-63

  Barkai, Ron ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84917089639     PISSN: 09518967     EISSN: 1743940X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09518969508569682     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Ch. Schirmann (ed.), Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Provence, Vol. I, Pt. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1971), 381.
2. See, for example, Y. Baer, The History of the Jews in Christian Spain, trans. L. Schoffman (Philadelphia, 1961), Vol., I, pp. 59–77.
3. On this process see ‘The Rise of Hebrew Medical Literature’, in R. Barkai, A History of Jewish Gynaecological Literature in the Middle Ages (forthcoming).
4. With regard to Hebrew translations, see A.S. Halkin, ‘Translations and Translators’, Encyclopedia Judaica, 1971, Vol. 15, cols. 1318-29
5. M. Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (Berlin, 1893, 2nd edn. Graz, 1956), pp. xv-xxiv
6. e siècle’, in Traductions et traducteurs au Moyen Age, ed. G. Contamine (Paris, 1989), 279–302.
7. I use this term principally to refer to scientific treatises written in the languages of the Jews, because from the point of view of content, with certain exceptions, there is no significant difference between these treatises and those written by Muslims or Christians. With reference to medicine, see R. Barkaï, Les infortunes de Dinah, ou la gynécologie juive au Moyen Age (Paris, 1991), esp. pp. 7–10.
8. Yehudah ibn Tibbon was born in Granada and moved to the south of France c.1060, practised medicine in Lunel and there also translated from Arabic to Hebrew. The quotation given here appeared in his preface to the book Duties of the Heart by Bahayah ibn Paquda (Zifroni edn., Jerusalem, 1962), p. 2. The problem of the lack of suitable Hebrew terminology bothered translators and writers throughout the Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century, for instance, the Spaniard Shlomoh ben Mosheh Shalom translated the treatise by Antonius Guainerius on fevers from Latin into Hebrew, and apologized for the use of non-Hebrew terms while defending the honour of the Hebrew language: ‘In fact, all these terms existed in Hebrew, but were lost during many generations in which that language remained in disuse’. Parma, MS 1365/7, f. 23r.
9. In the Festschrift for H.R. Singer. I thank the author for permitting me to cite his study before its publication. This article is in fact complementary to a previous one, in which the author provides a list and an analysis of the existing manuscripts. See P. Sj. van Koningsveld, ‘Andalusian-Arab Manuscripts from Christian Spain: A Comparative Intercultural Approach’, Israel Oriental Studies, 12 (1992), 75–110.
10. Luis Garcia Ballester and Concepción Vazquez de Benito are currently working on a critical edition and comprehensive study of the work. In a preliminary study the two scholars assessed the importance of the medical book in the following words: ‘It is an intellectual product highly elaborated, the expression of mature Galenism, based on direct knowledge of Galen's medical corpus and the extensive repertory of medical works of Arabic Galenism. Due to its formal structure, the subject which it elaborates, and its didactic character, it is indeed a singular writing in medical literature in the Late Middle Ages, the Latin as well as the Arabic or the Jewish … The work is the result of the intelligent thought of a practical Jewish physician who worked among Christians and who took part in the medical-scientific polemics of his time, those originating in the Christian-Castilian circles in which he lived, and in the polemics which took place in the rationalist circles of the Castilian Jewish community …’, ‘Los medicos judíos castellanos del siglo XIV y el galensimo árabe: El kitāb al-tibb al-qastālī al-malūkī (Libro de medicina castellana regia) (c.1312)’, Asclepio, 1 (1990), 120.
11. On Yehoshua'ha-Lorqi, this conversion and the subsequent polemics against Jews and Judaism, see Baer, History of the Jews, Vol., II, pp. 139–50.
12. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ms 3676,6, fols. 185r-216r. A brief outline of the contents of the treatise is given in M. Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden, 1970), pp. 348–9.
13. A short reference on the work is also included in M. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton, 1977), pp. 332–3. I am currently preparing a critical exegesis of the text which will be included in a more comprehensive work about how the plague appears in medical treatises. The name of the author as it appears in the manuscript is Ilyās ibn Ibrāhīm al-Yahūdī al-Ishbānī (and not al-Isbānī as copied by Dols).
14. B.A. Iskandar, ‘Al-Rāzī wa-miḥnat al-ṭabīb’, Al Mashriq, 54 (1960), 498–9.
15. e colloque d'histoire au présent (Paris, 1993), Vol. II pp. 117–28.
16. ‘Kitāb fīdīmiyā’; the correct Arabic title is Kitāb abīdhimiyā, see F. Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. III, Medizine, Pharmazie, Zoologie, Tierheilkunde (Leiden, 1970), pp. 34–5.
17. Kitāb al-amrād al-ḥādda, see ibid., pp. 33–4.
18. ‘Kitāb taqdīm al-ma'arifa’; the correct Arabic title is Kitāb taqdimat al-ma'arifa, see ibid., pp. 32–3.
19. Kitāb [ft] asnāf al-hummayāt, see ibid., pp. 94–5.
20. The Arabic translation of the work of Galen is Kitab al-sinā ‘a al-saghīra, that is to say, ‘The Lesser Book of the Art’, and not the ‘Great’ as stated by the author. This medical book was known in the West by the titles Ars parva, Ars medica, and Microtechne. He may be referring to the work of Hunain ibn Ishaq, Masā'il fi al-ṭibb li-l-muta’ ṭ allimīn or Kitāb al-mudkhal ila al-ṭibb, which was based on the writing of Galen and served as a general introduction to the theory of medicine. This work was also one of the basic books for the study of medicine in the West, and was known in its Latin translation by the name Isagoge Iohanicii ad Tegni Galieni or Liber introductorius in medicinam. See ibid., pp. 247–51.
21. The full name of the book is Kitāb al-aghdiya wa-l-ashriba (The book of food and drink), ibid., p. 412.
22. Kitāb al-ḥummayāt, see ibid., p. 296
23. cf. J.D. Latham, ‘Isaac Israeli's ‘Kitāb al-ḥummayāt’ and the Latin and Castillian Texts’, Journal of Semitic Studies, 14 (1969), 80–95.
24. For information about this doctor/philosopher see Sezgin, Geschichte, Vol. III, pp. 274–80.
25. See G. Colin, Avenzoar, sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1911)
26. cf. D. Jacquart and F. Micheau, La médecine arabe et l'occident médiéval (Paris, 1990), pp. 142–3, 205-8.
27. Kitāb al-qānūn fī al-ṭibb. See Jacquart and Micheau, La medecine arabe, pp. 73–84, 149–64.
28. Kitāb al-Kullīyyāt fī l-ṭibb, annotated edn. by J.M. Fórneas Besteiro and C. Alvárez de Morales, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1987)
29. cf. ibid., pp. 182–5, 193–5.
30. For Muslim society in the Middle Ages, see the conclusions of Françoise Micheau, ‘Les traités sur l'examen du médecin’, in La médecine arabe, pp. 124–5: ‘… il semble que, dans le monde arabe classique, la medecine savante … était une médecine exercée par un petit nombre de “médecins-philosophes”, reservee dans les faits a une elite urbaine … Néanmoins, par leur appels constants à l'autorité publique, au discernement de la clientele, au regard critique des collegues, les médecins arabes ont rejeté un art de guérir qui relèverai du subjectif et de l'empirique pour privilégier une conception de la science médicale alliant apprentissage des techniques et maītrise du savoir, valeurs éthiques et réflexion sur l'homme.’
31. As to the medical curriculum and the legal arrangements for medical licenciation in the West, see especially V.L. Bullough, The Development of Medicine as a Profession: The Contribution of the Medieval University to Modern Medicine (New York, 1966)
32. L. Garcia Ballester et al., Medical Licensing and Learning in Fourteenth-Century Valencia, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, 1989), Vol., 79, Pt. 6
33. N.G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago - London, 1990), pp. 48–77.
34. See R. Cecil, ‘The Qualification of Jewish Physicians in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, 28 (1953), 834–43
35. J. Shatzmiller, ‘On Becoming a Jewish Doctor in the High Middle Ages’, Sefarad, 43 (1983), 239–50.
36. As the author himself testifies, ‘I completed by theoretical studies with my family’ (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, MS 3676,6). I borrowed the term ‘open system’ from the book by L. Garcia Ballester, in which he describes the method of medical instruction used by the Moriscos in Spain during the sixteenth century which was similar in many respects to that of the Jews in Latin Europe. See his Los moriscos y la medicina. Un capítulo de la medicina y la ciencia marginadas en la España del siglo XVI (Barcelona, 1984), pp. 140–43.
37. This was the opinion of the Andalusian physician, Ibn al-Khaṭib, who rejected the decisions of the Muslim jurists (fatāwā) who wrote: ‘The existence of contagion is well established through experience, research, sense perception, autopsy, and authenticated information, and this material is the proof’. Cited in Dols, The Black Death, p. 93.
38. The Ottoman jurist, Tāshköprüzāde, a contemporary of Eliahu ben Avraham, summarized the Muslim position in his treatise on the Black Plague by saying: ‘Flight may not be possible because (1) the epidemic is universal; (2) the plague victims would be neglected; (3) the commonweal must be preserved from disruption and disorder’ (Dols, The Black Death, p. 299).
39. See especially N.G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500 (Princeton, 1987).
40. One can learn of the tremendous influence of the Canon within the framework of Jewish medicine not only from the number of times it appears in Hebrew medical writings, but also from its history in Jewish medical culture: in 1279 it was translated in its entirety from Arabic to Hebrew by Nathan Hame'ati; the first two books were translated again in the thirteenth century by Zechariah ben Ytzḥak ben Shaltiel; Hame'ati's translation was reworked and significantly improved c.1400 by the Spanish Jewish physician Yehoshua ha-Lorqi, and this version was one of the first Hebrew books printed; finally, so far no fewer than 111 whole or partial translated Hebrew manuscripts have been counted.
41. See R. Richler, ‘Manuscripts to Avicenna's Kanon in Hebrew Translation: A Revised and Up-to-date List’, Koroth, 8 (1982), 145–68 (Hebrew).
42. Ibid., fol. 188r. As to the position of the Muslim physicians, Michael Dols writes: ‘When confronted by the Black Death, iMuslims generally ascribed its ultimate cause to the will of God. The manner by which God caused it to occur among men, however, was the subject of innumerable and often contradictory explanations’ (The Black Death, p. 84).
43. As opposed to Islam and Christianity, within Jewish society almost nothing was written about the Black Plague except medical treatises, of which there are many. By comparing the understanding of the nature of the plague as it appears in different forms of literature, Dols summarizes the difference between Islam and Christianity in the following way: ‘If we compare the Judeo-Christian tradition with the Muslim religion, we can appreciate one of its major defects, the tendency to subsume death under punishment, to leave out the possibility of death which is not punishment … Specifically, the European writers laid greater emphasis upon the punitive aspect of the plague in God's plan than upon the monitory and purgative virtues of the disease found in Muslim society’ (The Black Death, 297).
44. Ibn Sīnā, Al-qānūn fī al-ṭibb (Cairo, 1877), p. 65; cf. pp. 64, 121–2.
45. Michael Dols clarifies it well: ‘In general, the magical beliefs and practices indicate a common need to supplement or to replace inadequate medical knowledge with supernatural devices for protection and relief from plague … The use of magic actually reinforces the contention that religious influence was paramount in any attempt to understand the nature of plague and combat its effects: God was ultimately responsible for sending the disease and consequently was the only one who could remove it’ (Dols, The Black Death, pp. 121–2).
46. R. Barkai, Natural Catastrophe or Divine Punishment: Jewish Physicians Facing the Black Death (forthcoming).