Al-Rāzīs Kitāb al-Ḥāwī (Rhazes, Liber Continens): Eine Konkordanz der arabischen und lateinischen Fassung samt Bemerkungen zu 13 arabisch unedierten Kapiteln

Abstract

Al-Rāzī's Kitāb al-Ḥāwī is an invaluable source for the study of Eastern and Western medical texts prior to the 10th century ad. It contains excerpts of several medical works lost today and gives access to a manuscript tradition of known medical works that is different from (or prior to) the surviving direct tradition. Furthermore it contains a number of own remarks by Rāzī and bears testimony of the vast array of medical texts available to him. In 1279 this work was translated into Latin (Liber Continens) and from 1955 to 1971 a (philologically inadequate) Arabic edition appeared. It is well known that the Latin version is based on a better Arabic manuscript than the ones available today and that the Arabic text should always be edited and read along with the Latin version. Due to a divergent book and chapter numberingof the Arabic and Latin versions and the lack of a concordance of both versions, it has been difficult so far to identify a known passage from one language version in the other one. In order to remedy this problem, in the present paper a comprehensive concordance will be made available for the first time. This concordance reveals that the Arabic Haiderabad edition lacks not less than 13 (!) chapters of the Continens. Arabic manuscripts are pointed out that contain some of the unedited chapters in order to make them available to scholars.