Lev Efraim
Jordan Valley College, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
J Ethnopharmacol. 2002 May;80(2-3):167-79. doi: 10.1016/s0378-8741(02)00029-6.
This article presents the results of a study of the medicinal uses of natural substances in medieval and Ottoman al-Sham (the Levant). It involved a meticulous survey of a wide range of historical sources spanning approximately 1100 years and including medical and pharmacological literature, travelogues, geographical and agricultural literature, dictionaries, archives, the Genizah and other medieval sources. Our main goal was to arrive at a reconstruction of the unwritten materia medica of the medieval and Ottoman Levant. Of the many and varied medicinal substances on which we were able to extract information, we were able to identify 286. These are presented according to the following classification: 234 species of plants (81.8%); 27 species of animals (9.5%); 15 kinds of minerals (5.2%) and 10 substances of other or mixed origin (3.5%). Analysis of the data showed that the region under study served as the geographic origin of the majority of the substances, only a minority of the materials was imported. The main reason for this is the geographic location of the Levant as a junction between three continents, as a cultural meeting point and as trade center. Finally, our data revealed that the al-Sham region was an independent source of production and marketing of medicinal substances during the medieval and Ottoman periods.
本文介绍了一项关于中世纪和奥斯曼时期黎凡特地区（今叙利亚、黎巴嫩、约旦、以色列和巴勒斯坦一带）天然物质药用价值的研究结果。该研究对约1100年间的大量历史资料进行了细致考察，这些资料包括医学和药理学文献、游记、地理和农业文献、词典、档案、藏经库以及其他中世纪资料。我们的主要目标是重构中世纪和奥斯曼时期黎凡特地区未成文的药物学。在我们能够提取信息的众多不同药用物质中，我们识别出了286种。这些物质按照以下分类呈现：234种植物（81.8%）；27种动物（9.5%）；15种矿物（5.2%）以及10种其他来源或混合来源的物质（3.5%）。数据分析表明，研究区域是大多数物质的地理起源地，只有少数物质是进口的。主要原因是黎凡特地区地处三大洲交界处，是文化交汇点和贸易中心。最后，我们的数据显示，在中世纪和奥斯曼时期，黎凡特地区是药用物质的独立生产和销售来源。
