IRAQ, LATE 12TH CENTURY

De Materia Medica by Dioscorides was one of the most influential ancient Greek texts on medicine and pharmacology. It originally made its way into Islamic civilisation through a translation into Syriac by Hunain bin Ishaq for the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (r.847-861). It was subsequently translated directly from the Greek to Arabic in the late 9th century by Istifan bin Basel and then by Mihran bin Mansur. From these two translations, copies of Khawass al-Ashjar were disseminated throughout Mesopotamia. The demand stemmed from the invaluable knowledge of herbs and trees held within the texts. The anatomical Greek influence is clear through the depiction of the plants’ roots and other biological features. The distinctive Islamic style can be seen through the tendency towards symmetry.

Towards the start of the 13^th century, figural imagery became more popular in Mesopotamian art (George Saliba and Linda Komaroff, “Illustrated Books May Be Hazardous to Your Health”, Ars Orientalis 35, 2008, p.37). Copies of Khawass al-Ashjar soon became populated with figures (see Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, 5847) which firmly helps to place our folios pre-13^th century. Further contemporaneous of our folio are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (65.271.1), Harvard Art Museums (2002.50.140), Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (AKM7) and in the Dr. Richard Ettinghausen Collection, New York (illustrated Hayward Gallery, 8 April – 4 July 1976, The Arts of Islam, London, no. 519, p.324). Due to the illustrated nature of this text, the pages were widely dispersed to the West, the aforementioned are all so close in measurement and style that it is probable they originally belonged to the same manuscript. One of these recently sold at Sotheby's London, 23rd October 2024, lot 117.

The four herbs illustrated here are Fariquluminun (convolvulus arvensis), Al-Hasak (tribulus terrestris, puncture vine), Afinus (Euphorbia apios), Al-Hanzal (cucumis colocynthis).