s ibn Al's Book on the Useful Properties of Animal Parts

The Science of properties represents a large and fascinating part of Arabic technical literature. The book of s ibn Al (9th cent.) On the useful properties of animal parts was the first of such compositions in Arabic. His author was a Syriac physician, disciple of unayn ibn Isq, who worked at the Abbasid court during the floruit of the translation movement. For the composition of his book, as a multilingual scholar, he collected many different antique and late antique sources. The structure of the text itselfa collection of recipes that favoured a fluid transmissionbecomes here the key to a new formal analysis that oriented the editorial solutions as well. The Book on the useful properties of animal parts is a new tile that the Arabic tradition offers to the larger mosaic representing the transfer of technical knowledge in pre-modern times. This text is an important passage in that process of acquisition and original elaboration of knowledge that characterized the early Abbasid period.