Description: The Kitāb Taḥrīm dafn al-aḥyāʾ, the Book on the Prohibition to Bury the Living, written by the Nestorian physician ʿUbaidallāh Ibn Buḫtīsūʿ (d. c. 1060 CE), deals with the causes, signs and treatments of apparent death. Based on a short pseudo-Galenic treatise, whose Greek original is lost, ʿUbaidallāh's Arabic commentary is a comprehensive and in many ways unique piece of scientific writing that moreover promotes a psychological understanding of physical illness. Oliver Kahl's present book offers a critical Arabic edition with annotated English translation of ʿUbaidallāh's work on apparent death, framed by a detailed introductory study and extensive glossaries covering all relevant terms; for comparative purposes, the Arabic and Hebrew recensions of the lost Greek prototype are presented in an appendix.
Brief description:
Oliver Kahl, Ph.D. (1993), Manchester University, is Research Fellow in the Department of Semitology at the University of Marburg. His work focuses on the history of Arabic medicine and pharmacy, and he has published widely on these and related subjects.
Gerrit Bos (Ph. D. 1989) is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the Martin-Buber-Institut für Judaistik, University of Cologne, Germany.
Review Quotes: "K. hat mit seiner philologisch soliden Edition, die durch ausführliche Indizes bereichert ist, ein frühes und wertvolles Zeugnis der gräko-arabischen Komponente der arabisch-islamischen Kultur zugänglich gemacht...Darüber hinaus enthält der Kommentar des ʿUbaidallāh eine Fülle interessanter Einzelheiten zu Zeitgenossen und weitere persönliche Reminiszenzen, auch zur eigenen ärztlichen Praxis." Gotthard Strohmaier, in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 114/4-5 (2019): 351-381