Following his 1994 editionFootnote ¹ and 2003 translationFootnote ² of Sābūr b. Sahl's Small Dispensatory (al-Aqrābādhīn al-ṣaghīr), Oliver Kahl now presents us with an edition and translation of the epitome of Sābūr's dispensatory as used in the ʿAḍudī Hospital in Baghdad, based on MS Munich Staatsbibliothek arab 808/2, copied in 741/1341. One might think that this is too much of a good thing. However, our understanding of the development of pharmacology and pharmacopoeias in the Islamic world is neither broad nor deep enough yet to do without this valuable addition.

As is his wont, Kahl begins by introducing the author, Sābūr b. Sahl (d. 255/869), a Nestorian physician and pharmacologist, who worked first in Jundishāpūr and then moved to Baghdad, where he became one of the physicians of the caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–247/847–861). The introduction continues with a discussion of the rather confusing manuscript tradition of the Aqrābādhīn, which includes at least two separate surviving versions, a small and a large one. The text before us is a revised, rearranged and abridged edition prepared by the physicians of the ʿAḍudī hospital in Baghdad – but it is uncertain whether they used the small, the (now lost?) middle or the large dispensatory as their source text. This version of the Aqrābādhīn includes material unattested in other manuscripts, and has a very different arrangement of the chapters. On the assumption that the hospital recension included mainly recipes of actual practical use, it is very interesting that the final chapter (no. 16), on the uses and occult properties of animal and human parts, which does not appear in the small version of the Aqrābādhīn, was retained here. The introduction continues with a description of the manuscript and the structure of the text, and concludes with useful glossaries of metrological units, pharmacological apparatus and applicative categories.

The Arabic text is followed by an English translation, amply annotated with philological notes and identifications of persons mentioned. Where the text contains cross-references to other recipes, Kahl has identified the recipes referred to and indicates them to the reader in the translation. Most helpfully, the notes also refer the reader to equivalent recipes in another formulary used at the ʿAḍudī hospital, the Aqrābādhīn of Ibn al-Tilmīdh, also edited and translated by Kahl.Footnote ³ Where references are made to other authorities, these passages are identified, and in the case of Greek authors, the original Greek quoted. In general, the notes to the translation include an abundance of quotations from French (Dozy),Footnote ⁴ Latin (Payne Smith)Footnote ⁵ and especially Greek (Kühn's editions of GalenFootnote ⁶ and Dioscorides).Footnote ⁷ As these are invariably accompanied by a citation of the original text, it may have been more helpful to readers who do not command these languages (particularly Greek), to have translated long quotations (e.g., note 131 on page 197).

Spot checking the translation against the Arabic text I found it generally good. This reader, however, has a few quibbles about the choices Kahl made in his translations of plant names. For example, Kahl translates shahdanāj (Cannabis sativa) as marijuana. This is a stylistic matter, and one of personal preference at that, but I would have preferred to translate shahdanāj as cannabis. This particular choice of a popular name stands out against the translations of kākanj (Physalis alkekengi) as alkekengi rather than winter cherry and of taranjubīn (Alhagi maurorum) as alhagi rather than manna or camelthorn. Given the excellent glossaries of names from English to Arabic, English to Latin, and Latin to English, readers will be able to solve perplexities with ease. Indeed, the glossary of technical terms that forms the final part of the book is most thorough, and Kahl appears here to have heeded criticisms of previous works in which the glossaries were not as full as they are here. The glossaries are keyed to the numbers of the recipes, rather than page numbers, thus affording easy transition between the Arabic text and the English translation.

Sābūr ibn Sahl's Dispensatory in the Recension of the ʿAḍudī Hospital depicts an important stage in the development of pharmacopoeias in the Muslim East. In the absence of actual prescriptions, such as may be found in the Cairo Genizah, it could be considered a source for the practice of medicine in post-classical Baghdad. Indeed, as fragments of Sābūr's dispensatory have been found in the Genizah,Footnote ⁸ a comparison of the materia medica and compound recipes used by the Genizah people with that of the ʿAḍudī hospital (as exhibited by this text and the dispensatory of Ibn al-Tilmīdh which replaced it) may be an important stage in the writing of the history of pharmacology in the Islamic world.