381 



imported the gum from Morocco or " Western " Africa, bat he 

 was evidently convinced that their Kalch and Oschak was 

 identical with the El Kalch and Cana of West Africa, which 

 must have been familiar to him. As Ferula communis does nor 

 occur in Egypt and no form of it is known to produce gum resin 

 in quantity nearer than Morocco and the adjacent districts of 

 bouth- Western Algeria, the inference is suggested that a trade in 

 b ashook gum from Morocco to Egypt existed in the middle ages. 

 Ihis is the more probable when it is remembered how close were 

 the relations between North- Western Africa and the eastern 



Islam 



But it does not necessarily follow that all the Oshak which" 

 reached Egypt and, through Egypt, Europe, came from Morocco, 

 nor that the terms Oshak and Kalch applied originally to the 

 Morocco article. It has indeed been suggested that the African 

 arnmoniacum first mentioned by Dioscorides was very early 

 supplanted by the Persian arnmoniacum, the resin of Dore)im 

 ammonia mm, and that the Arab translators and commentators 

 of Dioscorides, being partly Persians themselves, erroneousl; 

 extended the Persian vernacular Ushaq to the African arnmoni- 

 acum, including that of Dioscorides. This leads to the question 

 as to what was the arnmoniacum of Dioscorides. 



The Ammonia kon of Dioscorides. 



This is what Dioscorides says of his Ammoniakon, omitting the 

 purely therapeutical part : — "Ammoniakon [is a herb from which 

 the ammonian incense is gathered : some call it agasyllon, some 

 criotheon, or heliustrum, and the Romans gutta] : and this is the 

 latex of a Ferula which grows in the Cyrenaica. The whole plant, 

 including the root, is termed agasyllis. To be approved it should be 

 of good colour, free of wood particles and stonelets, resembling tears 

 of incense, pure and dense, free of impurities, smelling somewhat 

 like castoreum and bitter of taste. This kind goes by the name 

 of thrausma (fragments, analogous to the 'arnmoniacum in lach- 

 rymis 1 or tears of modern pharmacopoeias), whilst the other, which 

 contains particles of soil and stonelets, is called phyrama (cake, 

 ' analogous to the arnmoniacum in placentis sen massis, or 'lump 

 arnmoniacum'). It is produced in Libya in the neighbourhood 

 of the Amnion temple, and is the latex of a tree ferula. It is a 

 mollient, cpispastic and calefacient, and a diaphoretic for hard and 

 soft tumours. . . ." The above translation is from .sprengel s 

 edition of Dioscorides, vol. I., p. 43iK The paragraph agrees in all 

 essential points with the text in the so-called U '>'■>■ '»""- 

 bonmsis (C), where it is accompanied by a somewhat crude, hut 

 characteristic, figure (tab. 46). This throws much light on the 

 plant which Dioscorides, or at least his interpreters up totte 

 beginning of the 6th century, had .in view ^ under »•--»£ 



ammoniakon. 



pported 



inflated sheaths and a terminal inflorescence The leaves are about 

 half as long as the flowering stem, and each V**?™^**™ 

 <* opposit? segments of the first order ; hese ^gments are 

 themselves bipinnati-partite and ovate m out me ; h ^^ort 

 of the last (third) order are lacimate with few ^*7*£ 

 divaricate lobes. The large, inflated sheaths or spathes at the ba & e 



