EBN ABĪ ṢĀDEQ, ABU’L-QĀSEM ʿABD-al-RAḤMĀN

 

EBN ABĪ ṢĀDEQ, ABU’L-QĀSEM ʿABD-al-RAḤMĀN b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad NAYŠĀBŪRĪ (Nīšāpūr, 5th/11th century), medical author known in the century after his death, at least in Khorasan, as “the second Hippocrates” (Bayhaqī, p. 107), and reportedly a student of Avicenna (Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa, II, p. 22). His commentaries on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms (Foṣūl) and Prognostics (Taqdemat al-maʿrefa) Galen’s De usu partium (Manāfeʿ al aʿżāʾ) Masāʾel fi’l-ṭebb of Ḥonayn b. Esḥāq (d. 264/877)—completed in 460/1068 (Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa, II, p. 22)—and the Šokūk ʿalā Jālīnūs of Rāzī (d. 313/925) approximate a core course in medicine. The dates of his commentary on Prognostics and his rebuttal of Rāzī’s reservations about Galen, both lost, are unknown.

His reputation rests chiefly on quotations by Esmāʿīl Jorjānī (d. 531/1136; Richter-Bernburg, Persian Medical Manuscripts, index), on the gnomological literature (see references below), and on Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa. Although known in Khorasan in his lifetime, Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa reports that it took nearly two centuries for his work to reach Damascus. A manuscript of Ebn Abī Ṣādeq’s works copied directly from the author’s autograph was acquired by Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa’s father (Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa, II, pp. 22, 266) and may be the source of the Syrian tradition of his work preserved, for example, in two Cairene codices (cf. Ebrāhīm Šabbūḥ, Fehrest al maḵṭūṭ al-moṣawwara (Maʿhad al-maḵṭūṭ al-ʿarabīya), qesm III, jozʿ 2, Cairo, 1959, pp. 116f., nos. 148, 149).

 

Bibliography: (For cited works not given in detail, see “Short References.”)

A) Gnomological and biographical sources: ʿAlī b. Zayd “Ebn Fondoq” Bayhaqī, Tatemmat Ṣewān al-ḥekma, ed. M. Šafīʿ, Lahore, 1351/1932, pp. 107-09, no. 63.

Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad b. Maḥmūd Šahrazūrī, Rawżat al-afrāḥ wa nozhat al-arwāḥ, ed. Khurshid Ahmad, Hayderabad, 1398/1979.

Ebn Abī-Oṣaybeʿa, ʿOyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭebbāʾ, ed. Emraʾ al-Qays b. Ṭaḥḥān [i.e., August Müller], Cairo, 1299/1882 and Königsberg, 1884.

Nāma-ye dānešvarān-e nāṣerī I, Tehran, 1296/1878, p. 297.

B) Modern studies, including lists of mss: GAL I., pp. 206, 484; S I, pp. 367f.; GAS III, pp. 30, 107, 250, 411.

A. Dietrich, Medicinalia Arabica, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philos.-histor. Klass, Dritte Folge, no. XXX, pp. 20f., 43f., nos. 3, 15.

L. Richter-Bernburg, Persian Medical Manuscripts at the University of California, Los Angeles. A Descriptive Catalogue, Malibu (Calif.), 1978.

M. Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, Leiden and Cologne, 1970, pp. 68f., 160.

(Lutz Richter-Bernburg)

Originally Published: December 15, 1996

Last Updated: December 2, 2011

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