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KITAB AL-HASHA'ISH PROBABLY DECCAN, INDIA, 18TH CENTURY The herbal of Dioscorides beginning with maqala three, ending with maqala five, Arabic manuscript on paper, 155ff. plus three fly-leaves, each folio with approximately 16ll. of black nasta'liq, important words in sepia, catchwords, with 194 contemporaneous illustrations in opaque pigments, mostly of plants, in blind stamped brown morocco, purple paper covered doublures, some folios with light water stains Folio 9 ? x 6 ? in. (24 x 16 cm.)
Botanists of the Islamic world inherited a vast body of knowledge from Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Persian and Indian sources. Their interest in the plant world was extensive - for both agricultural and medical reasons. The first Arabic translation of De Materia Medica of Dioscorides was completed by Istifan bin Basil under the supervision of Hunayn bin Ishaq (Arnaldez, 1990, p. 254), and this is mentioned in the first line of our text.
A Persian translation with a new title, Kitab al-hasha'ish, was also completed on the order of Shah 'Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) and though the original imperial copy is now lost, a version dated AH 1054/1645 AD is in the Chester Beatty Library with a Shah 'Abbas preface. Judging by the number of impressive and lavishly illustrated copies that survive, it was clearly valued as a work of great importance, right up until the 19th century from when a copy produced for Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar is known (now in the New York Public Library, Spencer, Pers.ms.39; Schmitz, 1992, no.I.2, p.13). Two copies of the text were sold in these Rooms, 20 October 2016, lot 54 and 25 October 2018, lot 161. For a further discussion about the text, see Savage-Smith, 2011, pp. 42-71, nos. 14-16.
