385 



of Dioscorides' work, says, as already quoted (p. 383) "auetoritate 

 Dioscoridis " :— "hec herba grece dicitur as/os . . ." Cannot 

 the grecianised Asios and the Arabic Assac or Assach (Usliaq) 

 have the same derivation from some libyan or old Semitic 



vernacular, then in use in the home of the Cyrenaic ammoniacum 

 plant ? 



It is frequently stated that Ushaq was originally the Persian 

 name for the gum resin of Dorema ammoniacum, and erroneously 

 transferred to the Ammoniakon of Dioscorides by the early Arabic 

 writers, some of whom were Persians. Dymock * especiallv 

 assumed that Mo wank (about 975 A.D.) in his paragraph oil 

 Ushaq meant the Persian and not the African drug. It is true that 

 Seligmann in his translation of Movafik's Liber Fundament 'or urn 

 (p. 35) quotes under gummi ammoniacum : " Nota marg. Wesche, 

 persice idem"; but Achundow has it not. It may be a later addition 

 and mean no more than that the Persians call Dioscorides' gum 

 ammoniac Wesche. There is otherwise nothing in Mowatik's 

 paragraph which would suggest that he meant by Ushaq the 

 Persian gum ammoniac. On the contrary, he adds "vocatur- 

 a Graecis afarikun" (African), which remark would certainly 

 have challenged an explanation if he had had the Persian article 

 in his mind. Nor is there in the later Arab writers any definite 

 reference to a Persian Ushaq, and it appears to me more probable 

 that the Persian Pharmacopoeias transferred the name Ushaq 

 from the Arab literature to their own ammoniacum plant, the 

 Dorema ammoniacum. The Ulfaz Udwiyeh of Mohammed el 

 Shirazi (about 1450) has (no. 160) actually Ushuck as an Arabic 

 name, whilst the Persian equivalent is given as 'Se-mugh te-ra-tees' 

 and ' Se-mugh bil she-reen.' It is true, the same book mentions 

 later on (no. 1134) derukht ushuk as the Persian name of the 

 tree which produces the gum ammoniac, but this means simply 

 Ushuk tree, ' derukht ' (daracht) being Persian for tree. 



Export. 



The Ammoniakon of Dioscorides, Plinius and the later 

 writers up to the conquest of the Cyrenaica by the Arabs, came 

 no doubt from the ports of the Cyrenaica such as Darn is fDernaj, 

 Platea (an island in the Gulf of Bomba), &c.,and from Alexan ina, 

 the great trade emporium of the Levant. The export to Knrop 

 continued, though much reduced, after the advent ot the am - 

 and their subsequent supercession by the Turks; for the drug 



t 



purposes 



wnicn it was shipped, and repetitions ot """■"""""VST " " 

 hat it was gathered in the Cyrenaica, nothing more defimfc can 



be learned from medieval and renaissance Y"' 6 "^!! iVw 



J* his 'Histoire des Drogues' (1694), and Tonmefortm hg 

 'Materia Medica • (1708), and Lemery in the >Dcti o mm e^k 

 ^rogues ' (1698), fail to advance our knowledge on that point, ana 

 Linnaeus himself in « Materia Medica ' (l'^h P- 



• ^m^T^^eTanYl^oper, *ton^*£-Jf £^& *££ to M from 

 t Matthioli, Coram. Dio 3 c. ed. 1584, p. 379, says. Very mi 



Alexandria in tear ehape. Mostly it is »mP ure > llke pi£cn ' 

 masse?." 



