Isa ibn Ali's Book on the Useful Properties of Animal Parts

The 'Science of properties' represents a large and and fascinating part of Arabic technical literature. The book of Isa ibn Ali (8th cent.) 'On the useful properties of animal parts' was the first of such compositions in Arabic. His author was a Syriac physician, disciple of unayn ibn Is aq, who worked at the Abbasid cort during the floruit of the translation movement. For the composition of his book, as a multilingual scholar, he collected many different antique and late antique sources. The structure of the text itself-a collection of recipes that favoured the fluid transmission-becomes here the key for a new formal analysis that oriented the editorial solutions. The 'Book on the useful properties of animal parts' is an important tile that the Arabic tradition offers to the larger mosaic representing the transfer of technical knowledge in pre-modern times. This text is an important passage in that process of acquisition and original elaboration of knowledge from Antiquity that characterized the early Abbasid period.

Auteur

Lucia Raggetti, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Résumé

The 'Science of properties' represents a large and fascinating part of Arabic technical literature. The book of s ibn Al (9th cent.) 'On the useful properties of animal parts' was the first of such compositions in Arabic. His author was a Syriac physician, disciple of unayn ibn Isq, who worked at the Abbasid court during the floruit of the translation movement. For the composition of his book, as a multilingual scholar, he collected many different antique and late antique sources. The structure of the text itselfa collection of recipes that favoured a fluid transmissionbecomes here the key to a new formal analysis that oriented the editorial solutions as well. The 'Book on the useful properties of animal parts' is a new tile that the Arabic tradition offers to the larger mosaic representing the transfer of technical knowledge in pre-modern times. This text is an important passage in that process of acquisition and original elaboration of knowledge that characterized the early Abbasid period.