ISRAELI, Isaac, the elder, ISHAQ ibn SULAYMAN al Iisra'il...

Omnia opera ysaac ... cum quibusdam aliis opusculis. [Colophon:] Curauit ea imprimi honest[us] vir Bartholomeus Trot bibliopola Lugdunen[sis]. Extrema man[us] apposita fuit anno D[omi]ni. xv. supra . M. mense Decembri: in lugdunen[sem]. emporio in officina probi viri Johannis de Platea chalcographi

      Lyon: Jean de La Place for Barthlémy Trot, 1515. Folio: a--z8 [et]8 [rum]8 [con]8 A8 B10 a10; A--2B8 2C10 A6 (--A6, presumably blank), 451 of 452 leaves, ff. 226 [10]; 210 [5]. Gothic letter in double columns. a10 and A6 (--A6) at the end of each part are indexes, not included in the registers printed on B10v and 2C10r. Title printed in red and black and with a large woodcut (129 x 173mm); woodcut initials in several sizes. Leaf size and condition: 301 x 205mm. Titlepage soiled and worn with slight damage to type and woodcut; small worm hole through text in first 40 leaves, other wormholes in the margins; uniformly browned throughout. Binding: Eighteenth-century vellum boards. Small hole in vellum on spine and fore edges of boards, worn. Provenance and annotation: A few contemporary annotations. Walter Pagel (1896--1983); B. E. J. Pagel (1930--2007). References: Adams I181; Baudrier VIII, p. 429; Gültlingen II, La Place 27; Durling 2557 (not including indexes in foliation). First complete edition. The 'Tractatus de particularibus dietatis' was first printed in 1487. § Among the medical works, the Book on Fevers and the Book on Urine were highly regarded textbooks. Sarton calls the latter 'by far the most elaborate mediaeval treatise on the subject'. The Treatise on diet, the only text in print before this edition of Isaac's works, was the first separately printed work on the subject ( Garrison--Morton 1961). Of Isaac's philosophical works, the Book of Definitions and Descriptions, largely based on al-Kindi, was widely used by the Schoolmen in Gerard of Cremona's Latin version (Stern). The 'hearing' of a text by Isaac was a requirement of Cambridge students according to the statutes of 1396 (Stillwell). Isaac Israeli (or Judaeus), 'one of the greatest physicians of Western Islam' (Stillwell) was 'one of the first to direct the Jews to Greek science and philosophy ... he composed many medical writings in Arabic. Translated into Latin in 1087 by Constantine of Africa, into Hebrew, and into Sapanish, their influence was very great ... Isaac was the earliest Jewish philosopher (or one of the earliest) to publish a classification of the sciences. This was essentially the Aristotelian one as transmitted and modified by the Muslims.' (Sarton.) The Pantegni and Viaticum here ascribed to Isaac are free Latin versions by Constantinus Africanus of the Kitab al-Maliki of Ali ibn al-Abbas and the Zad al-musafir of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, called Ibn al-Jazzar, respectively. The Liber de oculis is also a translation by Constantinus, of the Kitab al-ashr makalat fi'l-ain, of Hunain Ibn Ishak, al-Ibadi. (Durling.) Literature: Sarton I, pp. 639--40; Stillwell 427; S. M. Stern, DSB 7, pp. 22--23.