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the opinion has been widely held that the position of Maimonides as a medical writer must depend mainly upon an unpublished work from his hand, known as the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum.[345] It is here sought to demonstrate that the Bodleian MS.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].)