DAUD B. ‘UMAR AL-DARIR AL-ANTAKI (D.1599), TADHKIRA ULI AL-ALBAB WA'L-JAMI’ LI AL-AJAB AL-UJAB, A MEDICAL COMPENDIUM, NEAR EAST, OTTOMAN, DATED 1108 AH/1697 AD

The author

Daud b. ‘Umar al-Antaki was born in Antioch, likely in the mid-sixteenth century. Born a Christian and son of a ra’is of Karyat Sidi Habib al-Nadjar, he was born blind but despite this invalidity he travelled extensively throughout Asia Minor. He was fluent in Greek, living in Damascus and later Cairo. He died in Mecca in 1599, only one year after his arrival there.

The text

The Tadhkira uli al-albab wa'l-Jami’ li al-ajab al-ujab is al-Antaki's most important work and follows the step of Ibn al-Baytar’s medical corpus. Other shorter treatises deal with the philosopher's stone and astrology.

The Tadhkira presents itself as a medical compendium, covering both illnesses and remedies and is divided as follows:

Introduction

Chapter I (bab I): f.7b, on general medical principles. 

Chapter II (bab II): f.17b, on the basic rules of the preparation of drugs. 

Chapter III (bab III and IV condensed into one chapter): f.34a, on simple and compound remedies and on diseases and their symptoms, therapies and cures, listed in alphabetical order.

A section of the Tadhkira, now in the Bodleian Library (inv.no.MS.Hyde.37), deals with coffee (bun) and was translated into English by Edward Pococke in 1659 with the title ‘The nature of the drink Kauhi, of Coffee, and the berry of which it is made described by an Arabian phisitian’ (Oxford, printed by Henry Hall, see Savage-Smith 2011, p.361).

Brockelmann (G II,364) lists copies in Leiden and Paris and The Wellcome Collection. A copy dated 1838 is now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, inv.no.MS.12187; two later copies have been offered at Christie’s London, 28 April 2017, lots 92 and 18 October 2002, lot 353.