The Kitāb Taḥrīm dafn al-aḥyāʾ, the Book on the Prohibition to Bury the Living, written by the Nestorian physician ʿUbaidallāh Ibn Buḫtīšūʿ (d. c. 1060 CE), deals with the causes, signs and treatments of apparent death. Based on a short pseudo-Galenic treatise, whose Greek original is lost, ʿUbaidallāh’s Arabic commentary is a comprehensive and in many ways unique piece of scientific writing that moreover promotes a psychological understanding of physical illness. Oliver Kahl’s present book offers a critical Arabic edition with annotated English translation of ʿUbaidallāh’s work on apparent death, framed by a detailed introductory study and extensive glossaries covering all relevant terms; for comparative purposes, the Arabic and Hebrew recensions of the lost Greek prototype are presented in an appendix.

The influence of classical antiquity on the religious disciplines, theology, mysticism and law of Islam cannot be overestimated. This work demonstrates the significance of the classical heritage by drawing together a great range of literary renderings, paraphrases, commentaries and imitations, as well as independent Islamic elaborations. Professor Rosenthal's collection includes the work of early authors, authors of the Golden Age and later writers who imitated their works. The Classical Heritage in Islam reveals that the Muslim adoption of and dependence on classical texts was not blind imitation or a casual compounding of traditions, but rather an original synthesis and therefore a unique achievement.

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