Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

PHARMACOLOGY
A great progress was achieved in pharmacology as a consequence of the Arabic version of the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, established by doctors in Cordova in the 4th/10th century. This, in turn, was twice summarised in Latin in 7th/13th century Toledo, while Ibn Wafid’s books on balneology (the scientific study to bathing and medicinal springs) and simple plant remedies were translated into Christian tongues: the first into Latin (De Balneis) and the second into Catalan. In the second of these works, the fruit of twenty years of research, he follows Dioscorides and Galen, but at the same time he makes his own personal observations, alleging that he prefers simples to compounds and that as far as possible, he would do without either, limiting himself to the prescription of well-proven dietetic treatments.
However, the greatest pharmacologist in Muslim Spain seems to have been al-Ghafiqi, who made detailed observations on the flora of al-Andalus. Al-Nabati’, Ibn Salih and Abu ’I-Hajjaj did the same, while their disciple, Ibn al-Baytar, continued this work in the north of Morocco and in all those regions through which he travelled. The text of Dioscorides known in Cordova during the

4th/10th century was gradually augmented as a result of the contributions made by other over the centuries up to the time of Ibn al-Baytar (d.646/1248). The latter, in the Jami’ al-Mufradat, lists more than three thousand simples in an alphabetical order, using the information collected by his predecessor, but adding his own comments. This work alone describes more than twice the number of

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Political and Cultural History of Islam
species of plants mentioned in the original Arabic version of Dioscorides.
BOTANY
In the field of natural history, especially botan> pure and applied, as in that of astronomy and mathematics, the Western Muslims enriched the world by their researches. They made correct observations on sexual difference between such plants as palms and hemps. They classified plants into those that grow from cuttings, those that grow from seed and those that grow spontaneously, as evidenced by ibn-Sab’in’s answar to one of Emperor Frederick’s questions. The Cordova physician al-Ghafiqi, abu-Ja’far Ahmad ibnMuhammad, collected plants in Spain and Africa, gave the name of each in Arabic, Latin and Berber, and described them in a wave that may be considered the most precise and accurate in Arabic His principal work al-Adwiyah al-Mufradah (on simples) was not merely quoted by practically appropriated by his later and better known conferee and countryman, ibn-al-Baytar. Towards the end of the twelfth century there flourished at Seville abu-Zakariya Yahya ibnMuhammad ibn-al-Awwam, whose treatise on agriculture, alFalahah, is not only the most important Islamic but the outstanding medieval work on the subject. Derived partly from earlier Greek and Arabic sources and partly from the experience of Muslim husbandmen in Spain this book treats of five hundred and eighty-five plants and explains the cultivation of more than fifty fruit trees. It presents new observations on grafting and the properties of soil and manure and discusses the symptoms of several diseases of trees and vines, suggesting methods of cure. But with all its importance this book was little known to Arab writers, neither ibn-Khallikan, Yaqut, nor Hajji Khalifah knew it and ibn-Khaldun wrongly considers it a recension of ibn-Wahshiyah’s.
The best-known botanist and pharmacist of Spain, in fact of the Muslim world, was ”Abdullah ibn-Ahmad ibn-al-Baytar, a worthy successor of Dioscorides. Born at Malaga, ibn-al-Baytar travelled as a herbalist in Spain and throughout North Africa and later entered the service of the Ayyubid al-Malik al-Kamil in Cairo as chief herbalist. From Egypt he made extensive trips throughout Syria and Asia Minor. In 1248 he died in Damascus, leaving two celebrated works dedicated to his patron al-Salih Ayyub, who, like his predecessor al-Kamil, used Damascus as his Syrian capital. One of these works, al-Mughni fial-Adwiyah al-Mufradah, is on Materia
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Medica; the other, al-Jarni, fi al-Adwiyah al-Mufradah, js a collection of ”simple remedies” from the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds, embodying Greek and Arabic data supplemented by the author’s own experiments and researches.5
In order to do this, these scholars had to rely on the more advanced sciences: botany, pharmacology and medicine. The first of the above disciplines had attained its peak in Muslim Spain with the anonymous work entitled Umdat al-Tabib fi marifat al-nabat li-kull labib, written at the end of the 5th/l 1th century In it one finds an excellent attempt to classify plants into categories (Jins)- species (naw) and varieties (sinf). which is far more developed than any other system previously conceived of, even including those of Aristotle and theophrastus.
The first known botanical garden was al-Rusafa, a kind of country estate devoted to recreation, built near Cordova on the orders of the first Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus, Abdur Rahman I. The Arabic sources give a splendid account of the construction and agricultural activity there, laying special emphasis on the introduction of new plants which were later to spread throughout alAndalus.6
It stands out as the foremost medieval treatise of its kind Some 1400 items are considered, of which 300, including about 200 plants, were novelties. The number of authors quoted is about one hundred and fifty, of whom twenty were Greek. Parts of the Latin version of ibn-al-Baytar’s Simplicia were printed as late as 1758 at Cremona.7