Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn ‘Abdallah ibn al-Hasan ibn ‘Ali ibn Sina, known as Avicenna (d.1037), Kitab qanun fi’l tibb (The Canon of Medicine), Near East, probably Beirut, 1856, A rare complete copy of Ibn Sina’s Qanun, transcribed from the Typographia Medicaea’s copy dated 1593.

Complete copies of Ibn Sina’s Qanun are incredibly rare. This exceptional set is not only complete but was copied from an Arabic edition printed by the Typographia Medicea in 1593, in Rome.

As stated in the title page, the text was copied in 1856 from an edition printed in Rome in 1593. This edition was printed by the Typographia Medicea, a printing press established at the request of Pope Gregory III under the sponsorship of Ferdinando de Medici. The so-called Oriental Press was commissioned to print various secular texts, including Ibn Sina’s Qanun, Nasir al-Tusi’s version of Euclid’s Elements, as well as religious - mainly Christian- works. The first text printed in 1590 is in fact the Gospels (for more information about the Typographia Medicea see Galateri di Genola, in Coletto & Zetti 2021, pp.31-34).

The fact that this copy was compiled looking at a European printed model is an interesting and unusual aspect. It is likely that at the time there were few surviving complete copies of the Qanun and the copyist might have turned to the Medici edition as it was the only one in circulation at the time. The tentative attribution to the city of Beirut is thanks to an additional treaty at the end of the first volume which states that it was copied in Beirut in 1275 AH/1858-9 AD. The treaty is unrecorded in Brocklemann and deals with pregnancy and birth. It is titled Kitab ma’dan al-ifad fi’l-habal al-wilada by Ibrahim Efendi al-Tabib and is divided into twenty-three chapters. While the date of this treaty follows the hijri calendar, the date mentioned in the title page of vol.I follows the Gregorian calendar.