The Ibn Buhtisu' Bestiary Tradition. The Text and its Sources.
Authors
Anna Contadini
Department of the History of Art
Trinity College, University of Dublin
Keywords:
Ibn Buhtisu' Bestiary, Middle Ages
Abstract
The Ibn Buhtisu' Book on the Usefulness of Animals is extant in several copies, five of them illustrated. After giving an account of the text, the Author of the article investigates its sources, finding that they are two folded: partly coming from a Greek tradition ultimately related to Aristotle's Zoology, and partly coming from Ibn Buhtisu' medical writings, which seem to stem from the lenghy tradition of the famous School of Gondesapur. A profile of the main representatives of the Ibn Buhtisu' family, for the first time translated here from the Arabic sources, is also given.
