The transmission of Indian scientific and, notably, medical texts to the Arabs during the heyday of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad (ca 158/775-205/820) is still largely shrouded in myth; its investigation continues to be hampered not only by serious methodological problems but also by a lack of philological groundwork and a shortage of trained researchers. This article, which in essence is meant to serve as a rough guide into one prospective field of “Indo-Arabic” studies, focuses on a badly neglected though highly promising cluster of texts, namely those that relate to the translation and adaptation of certain Ayurvedic key works from Sanskrit into Arabic. A general assessment of the current state of research, of the factors that condition our knowledge and of the obstacles and limitations posed by the very nature of the subject, is followed by a bio-bibliographical survey of Ayurvedic texts which were subject to transmission; the article is rounded off by six Sanskrit-into-Arabic text samples, with English translations for both.

This book offers an Arabic edition and English translation of Sābūr ibn Sahl's (d. 869 CE) famous dispensatory as preserved in a recension made by the physicians of the ʿAḍudī hospital in Baghdad around the middle of the 11th century CE. Drawing on different exponents of Sābūr's original, the recension also constituted an attempt at revising the pharmacological material on empirical grounds. Edition and translation are framed by a detailed introductory study and various medico-pharmacological glossaries. The book thus not only highlights the lasting impact of Sābūr's contribution to the development of scientific pharmacy in medieval Islam, but also provides another landmark on the road to a deeper understanding of the history of Eastern Arabic pharmacology.

This short notice suggests an explanation of mwrh and kmāšyr, two opaque terms which are occasionally referred to in Arabic pharmacognostic literature, but whose etymology and meaning have not yet been established.