BELLAKHDAR Jamal.
Traditional Moroccan pharmacopoeia: ancient Arab medicine and popular knowledge.
The Fennec
Regular price
€300,00
| N° d'inventaire | 30476 |
| Format | 17.5 X 24.5 |
| Détails | 764 p., color photographs, paperback. |
| Publication | Casablanca, 1997 |
| Etat | Occasion |
| ISBN | |
This book is the result of more than twenty years of field research on traditional medicine commonly used today by Moroccan populations. It is the record of a therapeutic system that is the example of a remarkable fusion between a local tradition drawing most of its resources from the natural environment and a centuries-old knowledge related to Arab-Islamic medicine. This practice remains very much alive in Morocco as evidenced by the large number of traditional practitioners, users, products and recipes... The book presents the interest of studying traditional medicine from several aspects: botany, lexicology, ethnopharmacology, chemistry, toxicology, ancient writings. The skills of the author, an ethnopharmacologist and informed botanist, connoisseur of Arab culture as well as Western culture, make this book a considerable amount of information and data. After describing the natural, historical and cultural context in which Moroccan traditional medicine is situated, the author provides the most comprehensive review to date of the products of the Moroccan pharmacopoeia (1,039 products of plant, animal, mineral or industrial origin, grouped into 694 headings). For each product are provided: - names in Latin, French, Arabic and Berber, - botanical, historical and economic information, - traditional uses noted in the field and in the literature, with precise references to the place, part used, author, etc. - some chemical and toxicological data, - a discussion based on Arabic written sources. Among the Arabic texts consulted by the author as sources of current popular knowledge, two of them, untranslated, had never been analyzed from a scientific perspective. These are the "Umdat at-tabîb" (attributed to a Sevillian botanist of the 12th century) and the Hadiqat al-azhar (by Al-Wazir Al-Ghassani, a Moroccan doctor of the 16th century). The work is intended for all those interested in ethnobotany, traditional pharmacopoeias, the history of medicine: botanists, pharmacists, doctors, anthropologists, historians... It is also aimed at those interested in the Maghreb, the Arab world, and traditional societies.
When an old man dies, a library burns... Jamal Bellakhdar gives this reflection a striking relevance. But this time it is no longer a library that burns; on the contrary, here it is a library that is reconstituted from the knowledge of more than 200 traditional practitioners and 450 various informants encountered during a meticulous investigation carried out over twenty years throughout Morocco. Thus, for the first time, an extremely comprehensive synthesis of traditional Moroccan pharmacopoeia is produced.
When an old man dies, a library burns... Jamal Bellakhdar gives this reflection a striking relevance. But this time it is no longer a library that burns; on the contrary, here it is a library that is reconstituted from the knowledge of more than 200 traditional practitioners and 450 various informants encountered during a meticulous investigation carried out over twenty years throughout Morocco. Thus, for the first time, an extremely comprehensive synthesis of traditional Moroccan pharmacopoeia is produced.
When an old man dies, a library burns... Jamal Bellakhdar gives this reflection a striking relevance. But this time it is no longer a library that burns; on the contrary, here it is a library that is reconstituted from the knowledge of more than 200 traditional practitioners and 450 various informants encountered during a meticulous investigation carried out over twenty years throughout Morocco. Thus, for the first time, an extremely comprehensive synthesis of traditional Moroccan pharmacopoeia is produced.