Among Zoroastrian burial items, there is a camel-shaped zoomorphic OSTADON lying there. It was found…
The al-Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan was founded in 1943 on the basis of the Oriental Department of the State Public Library of Uzbekistan (now the Alisher Navoi National Library).
In 1957, the Institute was named after the great medieval scholar and encyclopaedist Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973 – 1050). Nowadays, the depository keeps several collections.
Works by two above-mentioned court doctors of the Baburids, the Heratian doctor Yusuf ibn Muhammad Yusufi and Muhammad Akbar are interesting for comparative analysis. The treatise by Yusufi “Sitta-i zaruriyya” (Six Necessary Conditions [for Health]) is represented in six copies including an illuminated manuscript dated to 1798 made in Kashmir and included in one volume with other works by Yusufi. The work by Muhammad Akbar “Mufarrih al-qulub” (Delight to the Hearts) is a voluminous commentary in Persian on the above-mentioned “Al- Qanuncha” in Arabic by Mahmud al-Chaghmini. There are eight complete copies of the work with the earliest of them dating to 1725.
Both encyclopedic works and big medical books dedicated a special section to pulse readings, and some doctors who were proficient in using this method, wrote special treatises on the issue. These include two folios dating to the 19th century t itled “Miftah al-hikma” (The Key of Wisdom) by Darvish Muhammad Hakim Kilasabadi who was a disciple of a renowned Indian Sufi sheikh Farid al-din Shakarganj (d. 1265). The treatise was written in Persian in verse with the introduction and conclusion in prose. Also there is a treatise in Persian by the above-mentioned Yusuf ibn Muhammad titled “Dala’il al-nabz” (Pulse Readings), in six manuscripts, with the earliest of them dating to 1798, “Risala dar tahqiq-i nabz wa tafsira” (A Treatise on [a Patient’s] Pulse and Urine) by Muhammad Yusuf, an ophthalmologist and personal doctor of the Shaybani rulers of Samarkand. This work was dedicated to Sultan Sa’id-khan (1567 – 1572). The copy supposedly dating to the 17th century is a rare work available only in the al-Biruni Institute.
Among the rare works, two early works in Arabic “Kitab al-humayat” (The Book on Fevers) by Ishaq ibn Sulayman al-lsra’ili (b. 932) in the 1215 manuscript; and “Sharh fusul al-Buqrat” (A Commentary on Aphorisms of Hippocrates) by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Nishaburi (d. after 1068) in the 1292 manuscript should be mentioned as well.
You can learn more about this topic in the book-album “The Collection of the Al-Biruni Institute of Oriental studies, the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan” (part two, “Miniature and Calligraphy”) (Volume XXII) from the series "Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections".
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