The Regimen sanitatis or ‘Book of Pearls’ by ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabban al-Ṭabarī (d. after 855 AD). Edition, Translation, Study and Glossary

Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari，医生和自然哲学家，在土库曼斯坦出生时是一个基督徒，在波斯长大，在伊拉克去世时是一个穆斯林；他被认为是公元9世纪阿拉伯-伊斯兰医学形成时期最重要、最有趣的代表人物之一。他的主要医学著作，早已为人所知，并得到了应有的赞扬，被称为“智慧的天堂”，其特点是其中积累的材料的多样性，理性和神奇概念的无缝结合，尤其是对阿拉伯文学中独特的印第安人医疗体系的阐述。虽然关于医学问题的阿拉伯文著作一共有九部归al-Tabari所有，但除了《智慧天堂》之外，只有一部其他作品以手稿形式保存下来，正是这本书的初版、翻译和科学评价构成了当前研究计划的主题：《养生之书》，也被称为《珍珠之书》，在篇幅上可能比塔巴里的主要著作要小，但在其他方面，它构成了同等重要的医学史文献。因此，《珍珠之书》是关于一般卫生或预防医学的最早的、显然是真实的、而且是完整现存的阿拉伯文本；然后，作者不仅依赖希腊-叙利亚的资料来源，还同样引用了印度和巴比伦的信息载体——这一事实使他关于卫生的书在当时的背景下处于一个非常特殊的位置；此外，与《智慧乐园》不同的是，《珍珠经》不是一部全面的理论汇编，而是一本为人们的日常需求而设计的实用手册，因此，人们可以期望从中获得许多文化和社会历史领域的见解，否则很难切实可见；最后，对这项工作的比较语言学研究可能会对迄今为止仍然模糊的从印度到阿拉伯的传播轨迹投下更明亮的光芒。所有这些因素结合在一起，使得探索al-Tabari的“珍珠之书”成为一个真正的研究愿望。

Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, physician and natural philosopher, was born a Christian in Turkmenistan, grew up in Persia, and died a Muslim in Iraq; he is to be considered one of the most important and most interesting exponents of Arabo-Islamic medicine during its formative period in the 9th century AD. His chief medical work, long since known and rightly lauded, bears the title “Paradise of Wisdom” and is distinguished by the diversity of materials accumulated therein, by the seamless coupling of rational and magical notions, and not least by an exposition, unique in Arabic literature, of the medical system of the Indians. Whilst a total of originally nine Arabic writings on medical matters are attributed to al-Tabari, only one other work, besides the “Paradise of Wisdom”, is preserved in manuscript form, and it is this text whose first-time edition, translation and scientific evaluation form the subject of the current research proposal: the “Book on the Preservation of Health”, also called “Book of Pearls”, may be smaller in size than al-Tabari’s chief work, but it constitutes in other respects an equally significant medico-historical document. Thus, the “Book of Pearls” represents the earliest, demonstrably authentic and moreover fully extant Arabic text on general hygiene or preventive medicine; then its author does not rely only on Greco-Syriac sources but equally invokes Indian and ‘Babylonian’ carriers of information — a fact that places his book on hygiene into a remarkably exceptional position when seen in the context of its time; furthermore, and unlike the “Paradise of Wisdom”, the “Book of Pearls” is not a full-scale theoretical compendium but rather a practical manual designed to serve people’s everyday needs, and one can therefore expect to obtain from it numerous, otherwise hardly tangible insights into the realm of cultural and social history; lastly, a comparative philological study of this work may cast a brighter light on some hitherto still obscure tracks of transmission from India to Arabia. All these factors combine to make the exploration of al-Tabari’s “Book of Pearls” a true desideratum of research.