Zad Al Mussafir (The Viaticum)

Ibn Al Jazzar wrote a number of books. They deal with grammar, history, jurisprudence, prosody, etc. Many of these books, quoted by different authors are lost. The most important book of Ibn Al Jazzar is Zad Al Mussafir (The Viaticum). Translated into Latin, Greek and Hebrew, it has been copied, recopied, and printed in France and Italy in the sixteenth century. It was adopted and popularized in Europe as a book for a classical education in medicine. This book is a compilation as the Canon of Avicenna, a mixture of medicine and philosophy. Avicenna was not a medical practitioner, but Ibn Al Jazzar was, and his book was useful.

It is a medicine handbook from head to feet, designed for clinical teaching. We find neither anatomy nor philosophy. There are lessons written after the course, as noted by the author in the conclusion of his book. This can be seen by the repetitions found in them. The author names the disease, lists the known symptoms, gives the treatment and sometime indicates the prognosis. He often cited in reference the names of foreign authors, as if to give importance to his subject, or for intellectual integrity to justify the loans.

As al-Razi Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, preceded him by a few decades and as Ibn Al Jazzar has adopted in the Viaticum the same style as "El Hawi" (The Continent: who voluntarily abstain from carnal pleasures) of al-Razi but more elaborate and more concise, we can ask yourself if he did not have very early this book in hands. This is unlikely, because in "The Viaticum" he does not separate measles from smallpox, which was the innovation of al-Razi. And among the physicians whom he often refers such Galen, Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Refus, Tridon, Fergorius, Aristotle and Ibn Suleiman Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, he does not mention al-Razi. Books of these authors must have existed in Tunisia at that time. Tunisia was in constant contact with Rome, Athens and Byzantium by the sheer size of its economy, and the position of Tunisia in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea.


We can not speak of Ibn Al Jazzar without mentioning the translator of his books: Constantine the African.



sumber dari: en.wikipedia.org