MR. D. HANBURY ON RADIX GALANGE, 21 
Romans; at least no mention of it can be found in the classical 
authors. Its introduetion into Europe was due to the Arabians, 
in whose writings it is noticed at a very early period. 
Thus Ibn Khurdádbah, an Arab geographer who served under 
the Khalif Mutammid, a.D. 869-885, has left some information 
respecting China, after which he speaks of the country of Sila, 
whieh exports ..... musk, aloes [;. e. aloes-wood |, camphor, 
s porcelain, satin, cinnamon [cassia], and galangal *. 
The celebrated geographer Edrisi, who wrote a.D. 1154, ob- 
serves of Aden, that it is the port for Scinde, India, and 
China, from which last country are brought musk, aloes-wood, 
pepper, cardamoms, cinnamom, galangal, mace, myrobalans, cam- 
phor, nutmegs, cloves and cubebs f. 
The Arabian physicians, from Rhazes and Alkindi in the tenth 
and eleventh centuries downwards, make frequent reference to 
galangal as an ingredient of the complicated medicines then in 
use. 
Among the later Greeks I cannot find any mention made of 
this drug prior to Myrepsus, who probably resided as physician at 
the court of the Greek Emperors at Nicea in the thirteenth cen- 
tury; though several authors ,declare it is referred to much 
earlier. It is constantly named by Actuarius, who may have 
been contemporary with Myrepsus. 
In a work published some years ago in Paris, entitled ‘ As- 
sises de Jérusalem, ou Recueil des Ouvrages de Jurisprudence 
composés pendant le xiii? siécle dans les Royaumes de Jérusalem 
et de Chypre’ 1, there is a remarkable list of commodities liable to 
to duty during the twelfth century at the port of Acon in Syria 
(the modern Akka), at that period a great emporium of Medi- 
terranean trade, in which many Indian spices and drugs, in- 
cluding galangal, are enumerated. 
We find galangal also noticed, together with ginger and zedoary, 
as productions of India imported into Palestine, by Jaques de Vitri, 
Bishop of Acon in the early part of the thirteenth century $; and 
* “Le Livre des Routes et des Provinces, par Ibn Khordadbeh, traduit et 
annoté par C. Barbier de Meynard," Journ. Asiatique, sér. vi. tome v. (1865), 
p. 294. 
t ‘ Géographie d'Edrisi, traduite par A. Jaubert, Paris, 1836-40, 4to, tome i. 
51. 
t Paris, 1841—43, fol. tome ii. chap. 142. 
$ Vitriaco (Jac. de), * Historia Orientalis et Occidentalis, 1597, 8vo, | p. 172. 
p- 
