Ibn Biklārish, Junas (Jonah) ben Isaac
IBN BIKLĀRISH, JUNAS (Jonah) BEN ISAAC
IBN BIKLĀRISH, JUNAS (Jonah ) BEN ISAAC (end of 11thcentury), Spanish physician and authority on materia medica. Ibn Biklārish worked as a court physician for the Hod dynasty of Saragossa. In 1106 he completed what is probably the most important Arabic pharmacological treatise, the Kitāb al-Mustaʿīnī. This was dedicated to al-Mustaʿīn bi-Allah, the fourth Hod governor of Saragossa (d. c. 1110). It is a work of close to 500 pages, larger than folio size, containing in tabular form the names of hundreds of medicaments; their nature and function; their names in Greek, Persian, Syriac, Latin, and sometimes in Berber; and lists of substitute drugs with their properties and methods of use. The introduction to the tables, which is rich in pharmaceutical explanations based on *Galen, *Dioscorides, and others, shows Ibn Biklārish to have been one of the outstanding medical men of his time. *Maimonides apparently made use of the Kitāb in his Glossary of Medicines, although without mentioning it by name. There are three manuscripts extant, at Leiden, Madrid, and Naples.
bibliography:
G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 2 pt. 1 (1931), 235.
[Martin Levey]