Shem Ṭov Ben Isaac, Glossary of Botanical Terms, Nos. 1-18

Abstract

This article provides a critical edition and translation of the first eighteen items of the letter Aleph in the first list of the medico-botanical glossary compiled by Shem Ṭov ben Isaac of Tortosa in the second half of the 13th century. It is part of his translation into Hebrew of Book 29 of the medical compendium entitled Kitāb al-taṣrīf , whose original author is the Arabic physician al-Zahrāwī (10th century). The glossary is actually an autonomous one, composed by Shem Ṭov ben Isaac himself, containing two alphabetical lists of synonyms. The lemmata of the first list are Hebrew or Aramaic plant names gleaned from the Bible or rabbinic literature, in which each entry gives the Arabic, Latin, and Occitan synonyms. The second list is organized according to Old Occitan names of drugs and offers their Arabic, biblical/rabbinic, and sometimes also the Latin equivalents. For an Arabic equivalent to a rabbinic term Shem Ṭov ben Isaac consulted (as he tells us) medieval commentators, while for an equivalent to a biblical term he consulted Saʿadya Gaon (882-942) and R. Jonah ibn Janāḥ. The edition of the complete glossary is part of an interdisciplinary project at the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies of the University of Cologne and at the Department of Romance Philology of the Free University of Berlin, the goal of which is the edition and the analysis of unedited texts of medico-botanical literature written in Middle Hebrew.