THE ‘TRACTATUS DE CAUSIS ET INDICIIS MORBORUM’

كتاب الاسباب والعلامات

ATTRIBUTED TO MAIMONIDES

By Reuben Levy

Among modern authorities on Arabian medicine, the opinion has been widely held that the position of Maimonides as a medical writer must depend mainly upon an unpublished work from his hand, known as the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum.[345] It is here sought to demonstrate that the Bodleian MS. (Marsh 379), hitherto regarded as containing this work, is in reality by another author, while the Paris MS. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Ancien Fonds 411),[346] the only other alleged copy of the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum, contains in fact no such work. Moreover, evidence will be adduced showing that it is not probable that Maimonides composed a treatise of this scope.

For their information concerning the Tractatus, the modern bibliographers evidently rely entirely on entries in the catalogues of the respective libraries. The 1739 Catalogue of Arabic and Hebrew MSS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale contains the following entry:[347] ‘Codex bombycinus, Aleppo in bibliothecam Colbertinam anno 1673 illatus, quo continetur R. Mosis Maemonidae de morborum causis et illorum curatione tractatus, Arabice, charactere Hebraico.’ Careful examination of the manuscript disclosed the fact that it contained no fewer than four works of Maimonides, viz. on Poisons,[348] on Asthma,[349] the Tractatus de Regimine Sanitatis,[350] and the Tractatus de Morbo Regis Aegypti,[351] all bound together in confusion.[352] All these are known to be by Maimonides, and there is nothing besides them in the volume.

There has always been a good deal of confusion about the works de Regimine Sanitatis and de Morbo Regis Aegypti. The former is variously known as de Regimine Sanitatis, de Cibo et Alimento, de Dietetica, ‘the letter to the Sultan’, or as ‘the Consultation concerning (the Sultan) Al Afḍal’.[353] The latter also has a number of titles, such as de Causis Accidentium,[354] de Morborum Causis et Curatione, and Responsum ad Regem Raqqa, in addition to its title of de Morbo Regis Aegypti. In 1514, in Venice the two treatises were printed together in Latin as one work.[355]

Leclerc [356] has made confusion worse confounded by saying that ‘ce que l’on a désigné sous les titres, De Morbo Regis Aegypti, De Causis Accidentium, De Causis et Indiciis Morborum, De Cibo et Alimento, ne sont autre chose que tout ou partie du même ouvrage’.[357] No doubt he was led into making this statement partly by the fact that Wüstenfeld [358] gives the title of de Causis et Indiciis Morborum both to the Bibliothèque Nationale MS. (which Leclerc knew as de Causis Accidentium) and to the Bodley MS.

The entry concerning the latter in Uri’s Bodleian Catalogue of 1787 [359] reads as follows:

‘Codex bombycinus, anno Hegirae 765, Christi 1363 exaratus, folia 116 implens. Comprehendit succinctum de omnium corporis humani morborum causis, signis et remediis tractatum ab Ibn Hobaish Hierosolymitano ex Hebraica lingua in Arabicam conversum, cui sectiones sex supra centum sunt. Initium fit a morbis capitis; finis in elephantiasi. Composuit Musa Ben Maimun Alcortubi, Israelita. [Marsh 379.]’

The MS. bears upon one of its pages the title

هذا كتاب الاسباب والعلامات الحكيم موسى بن ميمون القرطبي الاسرايلي‎‘

‘This is the book of the causes and symptoms, by the Doctor Mûsa ibn Maimûn the Cordovan, the Israelite.’ (Plate [XLI].)

As a matter of fact it is no such thing. This title, together with an extra title-page and colophon in the same hand, is a much later addition to the MS., which also has a fragment of some other medical work—at present unidentified—bound up with it. The folios of the MS. which deal with the Tractatus have been bound together in extreme disorder, but examination of them has shown that they really form a fragment of the second book of المختار قي الطبّ‎, the Delectus de Medicina, by مهذب الدين ابو الحسن على بن احهد البغدادي‎, Muhaḏḏib ed Din Abu’l Hasan Ali Ibn Aḥmad of Bagdad.[360]

Ibn Abi ‛Uṣaibia (1203–1269)[361] gives a life of this writer and a list of his works, which includes the Delectus de Medicina. According to him, Muhaḏḏib ed Din was born at Bagdad in A.H. 515 (= A.D. 1121), and after studying medicine and philosophy settled at Mosul. Later he became the physician of the Shah Arman, chieftain of Khalāt on Lake Van in Armenia, in whose service he amassed great wealth. He completed the Delectus at Mosul in the year A.H. 560 (= A.D. 1164), and died there in A.H. 610 (= A.D. 1213), with the reputation of being first physician of his time.

Another fragment of the same work of Muhaḏḏib ed Din, which includes most of the contents of the Bodleian MS., besides a good deal of material which has been lost from the latter, exists in the British Museum.[362] The Leyden Library contains a unique copy of the work in three books. This is claimed to be complete by the Catalogue of the library,[363] although Bar Hebraeus [1226–1286]—Catholicus of the Jacobite (Monophysite) Church [364]—says that the work ran into four parts.[365] The three books of the Leyden MS. treat (i) of generalities (i.e. Anatomy, Physiology, and the general causes of disease), (ii) of medicaments, and (iii) of particular diseases and their treatment.

The Bodleian and British Museum MSS. contain part of the third book, which was probably in general use by itself as a dictionary of medicine. The British Museum copy has only lost the earlier chapters of this third part, but the Bodleian MS., although possessing a few more chapters at the beginning, is far less complete in the other portions.[366]

Wüstenfeld and the bibliographers that followed him have evidently derived their information concerning these MSS. from the catalogues of the Bodleian Library and of the Bibliothèque Nationale. No mediaeval bibliographer has up to the present been found who mentions this book of Maimonides.[367] Wüstenfeld’s usual authority for his statements is the great thirteenth-century medical biographer, Ibn Abi ‘Uṣaibia. But, though the latter gives a life of the Hebrew physician and a list of his writings,[368] he makes no mention of the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum. Moreover, this Tractatus has no place in Haji Khalfa’s admirable bibliography of Arabic works, which contains notices of four books bearing the title De Causis et Indiciis Morborum, not one of which is by Maimonides. Lastly, neither the historian Al Qifty in his Classes philosophorum et astronomorum et medicorum,[369] nor Bar Hebraeus, who is said to have plagiarized him,[370] notice the work in their sketches of the physician’s life.

The Bodleian MS. alleged to contain the Tractatus is one of a collection of over seven hundred volumes bequeathed to the library on his death, November 2, 1713, by Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop successively of Cashel, Dublin, and Armagh. Most of his Oriental MSS. had been procured for him either in the East by Robert Huntington, Bishop of Raphoe and chaplain to the English merchants at Aleppo, or at the sale of Golius’s library at Leyden in October 1696.[371] Golius was a Dutch orientalist, born at Leyden in 1596. He studied medicine and Oriental languages at the University of Leyden, and after leaving it he accompanied a French embassy to Morocco in 1622. He remained in Morocco for two years, and while there collected various MSS. On his return in 1624 he was appointed to the Chair of Arabic at Leyden, but was allowed a period of leave for travel in the East before taking up his appointment. He took with him a grant of money for the purchase of MSS., and these to the number of over two hundred are now deposited in the University Library at Leyden. On several occasions during his travels in Arabia attempts were made by Arab chiefs to detain him for his medical knowledge, but he returned safely and later wrote a number of works mainly concerned with Arabic. He died in 1667.

Among the MSS. which Golius himself procured for the Leyden Library was that of the Delectus. It is at least unlikely therefore that such a profound Arabist, who was also a medical man, would have bought the Bodley fragment for a genuine work of Maimonides; the primary responsibility for the error thus probably rests with Huntington. However that may be, it was Uri, in his catalogue of the Bodleian MSS., who first published the error, and from him it was passed on to the modern bibliographers.

John Uri was a Hungarian who had studied Oriental literature under Schultens at Leyden, and was recommended to Archbishop Secker for the purpose of cataloguing the Bodleian Oriental MSS., by Sir Joseph Yorke, then ambassador in the Netherlands.[372] Many years were occupied in the preparation of the work, which appears to have commenced in 1766 and was not completed till 1787. In spite of the length of time which Uri occupied in his task, his successor, Pusey, found sufficient errors in it to fill sixty closely printed pages. In his preface to the second volume of the Catalogue, issued in 1835,[373] Pusey complains ‘Urius vero MSS. haud raro negligenter exscripsit’, and says that on re-examination of Uri’s work he discovered, ‘besides the errors which Uri himself would have admitted, that nearly all the purchasers of these books, Pocock alone excepted, had had spurious works foisted on them by wily Orientals. He therefore looked through all the books which Uri had enumerated, excepting the more common ones, to see if they corresponded to their titles or not. By doing this he discovered various irregularities. In some cases the titles had been covered over with paper or obliterated with ink, or practically erased with a knife. In others, by slight changes in the authors’ names, more famous people were indicated as responsible for the works. Lastly, by changing the pagination in some of the volumes fragments were represented as complete works, and a few pages of one work were even occasionally sewn on at the beginning of another.’[374]

Uri’s errors will be the more readily condoned when it is remembered that he did not specialize on the Arabic MSS. alone, and that his work seeks to catalogue, for the first time, a two hundred years’ accumulation of Oriental MSS., including Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Aethiopic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Coptic writings. Nevertheless, Uri’s entry with reference to the present MS. deserves some of Pusey’s criticism. The MS. has three parts, each written in a different hand, the first and most important part being the supposed Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum, which covers folios 2–87. The second part is a fragment of some as yet unidentified medical work (folios 88–115); and the third, consisting of the first and last folios, gives us an introduction and an end piece to the first part.

The alleged author and translator are named on the first page:

هذا كتاب موسى ابن ميمون الفه للعموم قاطبا وقد نقله التميمي الشيخ سليمان الحبشى المكنا بابن حبيش في مملكة القدس الشريغة تم

‘This is the book of Mûsa ibn Maimûn which he put together as a compilation for general use. Al Tamimi, the sheikh Sulaiman the Abyssinian, known as Ibn Ḥubaish,[375] translated it in the noble city of Jerusalem. Finis.’

On the next page there is an introduction to the book which commences:

بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم قال موسى ابن ميمون القرطبى الاسرايلي الخ

‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
So says Mûsa ibn Maimûn, the Cordovan, the Israelite,’ &c.

The whole of the passage is an extract from chapter vi of the Aphorisms of Maimonides, adapted as a kind of introduction, and runs as follows:

قد علمت في قولي هذا في قوة النفسيه والقوة الحيوانيه والقوة الطبيعيه ولنسم الان في هذا الاصطلاح جميع افعال البدنيه للانسان قول ان اشرف الافعال التنفس وبعده النبط والاحساس واشرف الاحواس البصر ثم السمع وبعده الاحساس شهوة الطعام والشراب وبعد ذلك الكلام وبعد ذلك التمييز اعني الذي بها التفل(sic)‏ والفكر وبعد ذلك الحلافه لساير الاعضاء علي المعتادة وهذه الرتبة في شرف انما هي بحسب ضرورية الحيوة او صالحية فتعلم ان الطبيعة اسم مشترك يقال علي معنى كثيرة كالقوة المدبرة (sic)‏الحيوان ايضا طبيعية وما هو اشرف وتمسكت للاشرف في الاشراف وهذه الاسباب الذي قد رايناها ورتبناها وهو الابتداء في النزلات الزكاميه من الراس

Trans. ‘I teach in this discourse of mine concerning the animal power, the vital power, and the natural power, but we will here call all man’s bodily functions by one name. There is a saying that the noblest of the functions is breathing, next the pulse, and lastly the senses. Of the senses, the noblest is sight, which is followed by hearing. Following on the senses is the appetite for food and drink, after it being speech and then the mind; I mean that which contains the reason and the intellect. Next comes the [?] allocation of [the various powers to] the other parts of the body according to the customary manner. This arrangement in order of nobility is only according to the requirements of life or [?] health.

‘You will recognize that “nature” is an equivocal term which can be used in many meanings. [One of these meanings,] for example, is “the motive power of animals”. So, too, is “natural”.

[??...] ‘and that which is nobler. And you will retain the noblest of the noble [functions]. And these causes which we have noticed we have set down in their order; and the beginning is concerning catarrhal discharges from the head.’

Compare with this the real [text] of Maimonides:[376]

קד עלמת קול אלאטבא קוי׳ נפסאניה קוי׳ חיואניה וקוי׳ טביעיה. ולנפס אנא אלאן פי הדה אלאצטלאח גמיע אפעאל בדן אלאנסאן אלאפעאל אלבדניה [ואשרף אלאפעאל אלתנפש ובעדה אלנבט [377]] ובעדה אל אחסאס. ואשרף אלחואס אלבצר. תם אלסמע ובעד אלאחסאס שהוה אלטעאם ואלשׁראב. ובעד דאלך אלכלאם. ובעד דאלך אלתמייז. אעני בה אלתכייל ואלפכר ובעד דאלך חרכה סאיר אלאעצא עלי מעתאדהא והדה אלרטבה [378] (sic)‏ פי אלשרף אנמא הי בחסב צרוריה אלחיאה או צלאחיה אסתמראהא״ ובעד הדה אלמקדמה פלתעלם אן אלטביעה אסם משתרך יקאל עלי מעאני כתירת ומן גמלה תלך אלמעאני אלקוה אלמדברה לבדן אלחיואן פאנהא אלאטבא יסמונהא איצי טביעה והדה אלקוה הי איצי . . . . . . פאן גלבת ען דלך בדלת מא הוא אשרף ותמסכת באלשרף פאלאשרף ובחסב הדה אלתרתיב יעלם אלמרץ אלח׳.

‘Thou knowest the opinion of the physicians [concerning] animal power, vital power, and natural power. But it is my intention here to call all the functions of man’s body by the one name of “bodily functions”. [The noblest of the functions is breathing, next the pulse,[377]] and lastly the senses. Of the senses, the noblest is sight, which is followed by hearing. Following on the senses is the appetite for food and drink, after it being speech and then the mind, by which I mean the thoughts and the intellect. Next comes the motion of the other parts of the body according to their customary manner. This arrangement in order of nobility is only according to the requirements of life or the health of its faculties.

‘From this preface you will recognize that “nature” is an equivocal term which can be used in many meanings. One of these meanings [for example] is “the motive power in the bodies of animals” which the physicians call “nature” too.... And if you discover this, you will exchange that which is nobler and retain that which is noblest. By means of this process of arrangement, a disease can be recognized,’ &c.

This introduction was added when the folios stood in a state of disorder different from their present one. The catchword at the bottom of the page [وهذا‎, = and this] points forward to the title already mentioned,[379] which appears on folio thirty-nine of the present arrangement. The text below this title is part of the chapter on discharges and catarrh, so that the folio once followed immediately on the introduction, being then, too, out of its proper place.

The last page, written in the same hand as the introduction, bears a piece of some unidentified work and a colophon which reads:

وقد تم هذا الكتاب الشريف تاليف موسى ابن ميمون القرطبى الاسرايلى رحمه الله مما الف وجرب هذا الكتاب المبارك وعدد فصوله مائة وست فصول للجميع(sic)‏ امراض البدن مما رتبه على اوضاعه تم الكتاب فى سنة (sic)٦٥٢٧‏ سبع مالة و وخمسة وستين

‘This noble book is finished; the composition of Mûsa ibn Maimûn the Cordovan, the Israelite, to whom God be gracious. This blessed book is part of that which he composed and tested. The number of its chapters is 106, dealing with all the diseases of the body, which he arranged in their proper order.

‘The book was completed in the year 765.’[380]

The number 106, which according to the colophon is the number of chapters in the book, is really the number of titles in the MS. written in large hand. Fragments of many chapters whose titles are lost still remain in it however, while many of the chapters that have preserved their titles are no longer complete.

Again it may be pointed out that all the known medical works of Maimonides were written in Arabic and therefore did not need to be translated into that language as the Bodleian MS. claims to have been. The spurious title-page thus further betrays itself by saying that this work was translated from Hebrew.

Finally, the identification of the real contents of the Paris MS. disposes of the last foundation of the idea that Maimonides wrote any compendium of medicine known as كتاب الاسباب والعلامات‎ (Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum), and clears up the confusion caused by the faulty entries in the Paris and Bodleian catalogues.