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Lot Essay
The diagrams are as follows: 1. The human body showing the veins, 2. The human body showing the skeleton, 3. The human body showing the nervous system, 4. The human body showing the muscles, 5. The human body showing the arteries, 6. The female human body showing a foetus in the womb and other organs, 7. The female human body with long tresses of black hair, 8. The anatomy of the human eye followed by illustrations of various surgical instruments and small illustrations of a foetus, heart, stomach and spleen.
In his preface, the author writes that the text concerns anatomy, ailments of different parts of the body and their cure, and that he has used Kamil al-sina’at al-tibiyya by ‘Ali bin ‘Abbas al-Ahwazi (d.940 AD), and the Canon of Avicenna (d. 1037 AD). Al-Ahwazi appears to be the first physician to mention a network linking the veins and the arteries (Ziauddin Sardar, The Touch of Midas: Science, Values, and Environment in Islam and the West, Manchester, 1984, p.80). The text and illustrations of this Arabic version can be compared with the well-known Persian illustrated treatise Tashrih-i mansuri of Mansur bin Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Yusuf Faqih Ilyas (d. after AH 826/1422 AD), many copies of which have sold at Christie's, London (B. Schmitz, Islamic Manuscripts in the New York Public Library, Oxford, 1992, fig.135-36, pp.134-35).
Another illustrated copy of Al-Basri was sold at Christie's, South Kensington, 7 October 2011, lot 98.
In his preface, the author writes that the text concerns anatomy, ailments of different parts of the body and their cure, and that he has used Kamil al-sina’at al-tibiyya by ‘Ali bin ‘Abbas al-Ahwazi (d.940 AD), and the Canon of Avicenna (d. 1037 AD). Al-Ahwazi appears to be the first physician to mention a network linking the veins and the arteries (Ziauddin Sardar, The Touch of Midas: Science, Values, and Environment in Islam and the West, Manchester, 1984, p.80). The text and illustrations of this Arabic version can be compared with the well-known Persian illustrated treatise Tashrih-i mansuri of Mansur bin Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Yusuf Faqih Ilyas (d. after AH 826/1422 AD), many copies of which have sold at Christie's, London (B. Schmitz, Islamic Manuscripts in the New York Public Library, Oxford, 1992, fig.135-36, pp.134-35).
Another illustrated copy of Al-Basri was sold at Christie's, South Kensington, 7 October 2011, lot 98.