Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Harawi

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Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Harawi was a Persian late 15th century physician from Herat, now part of Afghanistan.

In 1518 he composed, in Arabic, an alphabetical medical dictionary and encyclopedia. It covered anatomical and pathological terms and concepts, medicinal substances, and prominent physicians, with all the entries arranged alphabetically. The National Library of Medicine has one copy of this comprehensive medical dictionary.

Harawi also wrote a lexicon titled Jawahir al-lughah, in three chapters: the first explaining terminology for parts of the body (in alphabetical order), the second on the names of simple and compound drugs (also in alphabetical order), and the third on names of diseases, presented in order from head to toe according to their locations. An autograph copy of Jawahir al-lughah exists in which the author states that he completed the correction of the treatise in 1492 (London, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, MS Arab. 143).

The Bahr al-jawahir is a very different treatise written later, in 1518. It has no subdivisions, but rather presents all the medical terminology together in alphabetical order, with the explanations of the numerous anatomical, pathological and medicinal terms mostly in Arabic but sometimes in Persian.

[edit] Sources

A.Z. Iskandar, "Jawahir al-lughah wa-Bahr al-jawahir: mu‘jaman mukhtalifan lil-tabib Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Harawi" [in Arabic], al-Mashriq, 1963, vol. 57, pp. 331-334 and 7 plates.
A. Z. Iskandar, A Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: The Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1967), pp. 68-9.
Manfred Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, Handbuch der Orientalistik, Abteilung I, Ergänzungsband vi, Abschnitt 1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970). , p. 237.