Text page from a Materia Medica of Dioscorides
c. 1224
Medium
ink and opaque watercolor on paper
Dimensions
image: 24 × 19 cm · sheet: 33.1 × 24.5 cm
Classification
Manuscript
Department
Islamic Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
John L. Severance Fund
Accession Number
1977.91.a
Tags
About this artwork
This page is from an herbal, an illustrated book on the properties of plants. Herbals were among the first manuscripts of the Islamic world to include painted figural imagery. The lines in red are titles signaling how to make a particular kind of medicine. Initially written in Greek by a physician working for the Roman imperial army in what is present-day Turkey during the 1st century AD, the text was translated into Arabic during the 800s for a caliph who sponsored many translations of Greek sc...