The Pharmacological Tables of Rhazes

Abstract

This article deals with the 22nd volume of Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyāʾ al-Rāzīʾs (Rhazes, d. 313/925) medical encyclopedia al-Ḥāwī fī l-ṭibb. Volume twenty-two is dedicated to pharmacology and pharmacological tables, and introduced by a short treatise in which Rhazes explains his unusual choice of tabular design and terminological arrangement. Following upon a brief bio-bibliographical survey and forming the core of this article, Rhazesʾ introductory treatise is re-edited here in the original Arabic and further made accessible through an annotated English translation. Edition and translation, in turn, are followed by a detailed study of both the treatise and the tables, including explanatory diagrams, statistical evaluations, a source-critical analysis, and some observations regarding the tradition of synoptic tables in Arabic pharmaceutical literature — thus gradually emerges the conceptual originality of Rhazesʾ implementation, and new light is thrown on his broad linguistic interests and abilities. The article concludes with an excursion into the realm of Persian-Chinese intellectual exchange, suggesting the possibility of a stimulus to Rhazesʾ imagination from a remote and otherwise mostly hidden corner.