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Abstract
This article presents the results of a study of the medicinal uses of natural substances
in medieval and Ottoman al-Sham (the Levant). It involved a meticulous survey of a
wide range of historical sources spanning approximately 1100 years and including medical
and pharmacological literature, travelogues, geographical and agricultural literature,
dictionaries, archives, the Genizah and other medieval sources. Our main goal was
to arrive at a reconstruction of the unwritten materia medica of the medieval and
Ottoman Levant. Of the many and varied medicinal substances on which we were able
to extract information, we were able to identify 286. These are presented according
to the following classification: 234 species of plants (81.8%); 27 species of animals
(9.5%); 15 kinds of minerals (5.2%) and 10 substances of other or mixed origin (3.5%).
Analysis of the data showed that the region under study served as the geographic origin
of the majority of the substances, only a minority of the materials was imported.
The main reason for this is the geographic location of the Levant as a junction between
three continents, as a cultural meeting point and as trade center. Finally, our data
revealed that the al-Sham region was an independent source of production and marketing
of medicinal substances during the medieval and Ottoman periods.