Books on medicine were among the first scientific works to be translated into Arabic during the translation movement of the eighth to tenth centuries. The pharmacological tradition in Arabic is based on the Hellenistic one, featuring the works of Galen and Dioscorides in particular, but goes far beyond it. The addition of materia medica from further east – India, China and Southeast Asia – that was unknown to classical authors is an important characteristic of pharmacy in the Islamic world. Books were devoted to the materia medica unknown to the Greeks, and the most commonly used plants included myrobalans (Terminalia spp.) from India, lemons from China, and cloves from Southeast Asia...
Left: Books on medicine were among the first scientific works to be translated into Arabic during the translation movement of the 8th to 10th centuries. This image from a copy of the Arabic translation of Dioscorides’ On Medical Substances dipicts what’s happening inside a pharmacist’s shop.