An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

IBN SAHL RABBAN AL-TABARI, Abu al-Hasan Ali (علی ابن سهل ربان طبری ‎‎)

1 entries
  • 8326

Firdausu'l-Hikmat or Paradise of wisdom. Edited by M. Z. Siddiqi.

Berlin: Buch-und Kunstr. , 1928.

Firdous al-Hikmah is one of the oldest encyclopedias of Islamic medicine, based on Syriac translations of Greek sources (Hippocrates, Galen Dioscorides, and others). It is divided into 7 sections and 30 parts, with 360 chapters in total. The work was eclipsed by those of Rabban al-Tabari's more famous pupil, Muhammad ibn ZakarÄ«a Rāzi (Rhazes). After writing the work in Arabic Rabban a-Tabari also translated it into Syriac, to give it wider usefulness. However, the information in Firdous al-Hikmah never entered common circulation in the West because it was not edited until the 20th century, when Mohammed Zubair Siddiqui assembled an edition using the five surviving partial manuscripts. There is still no English translation. A German translation by Alfred Siggel of the chapters on Indian medicine was published in 1951. (adapted from the Wikipedia article on Ali ibn Sahl Rabban-al Tabari, accessed 12-2016.)

See Max Meyerhof, "Alî at-Tabarî's 'Paradise of Wisdom", one of the oldest Arabic compendiums of medicine," Isis, 16 (1931) 6-54. Available from Scribd at this link.



Subjects: Encyclopedias, MEDIEVAL MEDICINE , MEDIEVAL MEDICINE › Medieval Persian Islamic Medicine