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of the Persian authors, and also how soon the first of the 
former followed the last of the Greeks. This is the more 
necessary to he done, as he who closes the line, and is 
among the most celebrated in the East on the subject of 
Materia Medica, is unnoticed in our histories of medicine; 
probably from his works only existing in manuscript. 
But he was sufficiently celebrated to have attracted the 
notice of Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire, as well as of my late friend, Mr. Charles Mills, 
in his History of Muhammedanism, and has been one of 
the authors recommended to be translated by the Oriental 
Translation Committee. This is Al-Beitar, frequently called 
Ibn-Beitar, who flourished in the thirteenth century, and is 
described as having traversed Africa, Arabia, and India, 
in prosecution of his favourite study of Plants, particularly 
those yielding medicinal substances. His MSS. are preserved 
in the Escurial (No. 834), and are said to contain notices of 
several thousand plants, and to have afforded considerable 
assistance to the learned Bochart, in his work entitled Geo- 
graphia Sacra, in elucidating many of the plants, animals, 
and precious stones, mentioned in the Bible. His works, 
called Jama Ibn Beitar and Jama-Baghdadee, or Collection 
of Ibn-Beitar and of Bagdad, are constantly quoted by 
the Persian authors on Materia Medica. His death is 
reported to have occurred in the year 1248, so as to have 
preceded only by 120 years the publication of the first work 
in the Persian language on Materia Medica. 
The Arabian School being well known to have originated 
in the munificent patronage of the sciences by the Caliphs 
of Bagdad, it is necessary only to allude to the first trans- 
lations from the Greek authors on Philosophy, Mathematics, 
Astronomy, and Medicine, having been made about a.d. 745, 
or just five hundred years before the death of Ibn Beitar, 
during the Caliphate of Al-Mansor. These translations 
