Table 1 Main historical sources for the research
From: Healing with animals in the Levant from the 10th to the 18th century
Name | Period | Description | References |
|---|---|---|---|
al-Mas'udi | 10th-century | A Muslim geographer whose travel accounts provide information about production and trade in medicinal materials, including substances of animal origin. | [43] |
al-Tamimi | 10th-century | A Jerusalem physician all of whose works are lost except one, which has recently been studied. Yet his writings are indirectly known through their citation by later authorities such as Maimonides [44, 45] and Ibn al-Baytar [46]. | [47, 48] |
Genizah Documents | 11th century | The Cairo Genizah (depository) contains private and commercial correspondence and legal documents of the medieval Jewish communities of the Eastern Mediterranean. Several 11th-century correspondences of Jewish traders contain important information about the trade in and the use of medicinal materials. | [49, 50, 51] |
Acre Taxes | 13th century | The Assizes de Jerusalem contain many documents related to various aspects of the Crusader governing system in the Levant. A list of products traded in Acre, the main commercial city in the Crusader kingdom, and the taxes levied on them was used. | [52] |
Benevenutus Grassus | 12th–13th centuries | Benevenutus was a Frankish ophthalmologist, who in his book on the subject named some of his prescriptions 'Jerusalemics'. | [53, 54, 55] |
Jacques de Vitry | 12th–13th centuries | Bishop of Acre, who published his knowledge accumulated through travelling and reading. His book contains some medical information. | [56, 57] |
Rabbi Moshe Ben-Maimon (Maimonides) | 12th–13th centuries | A Jewish physician and religious philosopher from Andalusia who worked mainly in Egypt, where he was the Sultan's personal physician. Maimonides wrote many medical books. | [44, 45, 58] |
Abu Muhammad Abd Allah Ibn Ahmad Ibn al-Baytar | 13th century | Andalusian physician and herbalist, who visited the Near East. In The Compendium of Simple Drugs and Food, among hundreds of remedies he mentions numerous medicinal substances of animal origin in use in Bilad al-Sham in his day. | [46] |
Shams al-Din al-'Uthmani | 14th-century | A Muslim judge in the Safed region who wrote a description of the city and the surrounding area which contains information about local medicinal substances and their applications. | [59] |
Francesco Suriano | 15th–16th centuries | An Italian trader who became a Franciscan monk, serving his order for many years in the Levant. His unique knowledge was preserved in his Treatise on the Holy Land, which contains important information about medieval agriculture and some details about the medicinal substances in use in the Levant at the time. | [60] |
Italian Trade | 13th–15th centuries | Venetian maritime trade documents provide us with information about medicinal materials exported from Acre to Europe by the Venetians. Commercial documents from various archives, mainly Italian, shed light on the trade in spices, agricultural products, and industrial raw materials. | [61] |
Frescobaldi | 14th century | An Italian traveller who visited the Levant, together with Gucci and Sigoli, in 1384. They published their travel accounts, which contain some information about the medicinal uses of plants and animals. | [62] |
Felix Fabri | 15th century | A Dominican monk of Swiss origin who visited the Levant. He wrote an important work, with copious information about the region, its residents, their customs, and the goods that were available on the local markets. | [63] |
Daud Ibn 'Umar al-Antaki | 16th century | A Turkish physician from Antioch who became a well-known writer. His treatise on medicine contains useful information about medieval Islamic medicine and medicinal substances and their usage in the Levant. | [64, 65, 66] |
Rabbi Hayyim Vital | 16th–17th centuries | A Jewish scholar who worked as a physician in Safed, Jerusalem, and Damascus. | [67, 68] |
Rafael Mordechai Malki | 17th century | An Italian Jewish physician who arrived to Jerusalem in 1677 and became one of the heads of the Jewish community of the holy city and their physician. | [69] |
David de Silva | 17th–18th centuries | A physician and one of the leaders of the Jewish community of Jerusalem. His book Peri Megadim supplies us with information about the medicinal uses of the contemporary materia medica in Jerusalem. | [70] |
Franciscan Lists | 18th century | A Franciscan medical institution in Jerusalem was well known in medieval and Ottoman Jerusalem mainly for its rich 'modern' stock of medicinal substances. Few 18th century lists of the medicinal materials in the pharmacy were recently discovered and studied. | [71] |