I am very pleased to offer to the reader this edition and translation of Maimonides’ On the Elucidation of Some Symptoms and the Response to Them (formerly called On the Causes of Symptoms). This consilium, commonly known as De causis accidentium following the Latin translation by John de Capua, was, just like the first consilium entitled On the Regimen of Health, composed by Maimonides at the request of al-Malik al-Afḍal Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī, Saladin’s eldest son. Possibly because al-Afḍal had not adopted the lifestyle and diet recommended by Maimonides in his first consilium, he continued to suffer from a number of afflictions, amongst them hemorrhoids, depression, constipation, and, possibly, a heart condition. It was probably written not long before the year 1204, in which Maimonides died, and after the year 1200 in which al-Afḍal was deposed from the regency and banished from Egypt permanently. Contrary to On the Regimen of Health, this second consilium did not enjoy great popularity in Jewish circles, as we only have one Arabic manuscript written in Hebrew characters, namely, MS Paris, BN, héb. 1202, one anonymous Hebrew translation, which only survives in MS Jerusalem, National and University Library, Heb. 803941, and another anonymous translation, only surviving in fragments in MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Or. qu. 836. Already in the fifteenth century, the text seems to have been exceedingly rare and sunk into oblivion.
The Arabic text of this consilium has been edited in the past by Hermann Kroner on the basis of two Arabic manuscripts, namely MS Oxford, Bodleian, Poc. 313 (in Arabic letters) and MS Oxford, Bodleian, Poc. 280 (in Hebrew letters). However, his edition suffers from mistakes and incorrect readings, which can be partly explained from the defective state of MS Oxford, Bodleian, Poc. 313, which was the only complete manuscript he had access to and was thus used by him for establishing the basic text. Kroner’s edition has been reproduced by Martin Plessner in the Leibowitz and Marcus edition of On the Causes of Symptoms, with a few corrections of the corrupt basic text. This “edition” is thus still based on the corrupt MS Oxford, Bodleian, Poc. 313, although Plessner recognised the need for a complete revision and revised critical apparatus. The anonymous Hebrew translation, MS Jerusalem, National and University Library, Heb. 803941, has been reproduced by Leibowitz and Marcus in a facsimile edition, whereby only some of the numerous corruptions and mistakes have been corrected in the critical apparatus. The second fragmentary anonymous Hebrew translation, MS Berlin, Or. qu 836, was edited by Kroner as part of his edition of the Arabic text, but suffers from several editorial mistakes. Bar-Sela, Hoff and Faris provided a new English translation on the basis of the Arabic text under consultation of the Hebrew and Latin translation. As this translation is in general accurate and only suffers from occasional mistakes, I have consulted it extensively for my own translation, for which opportunity I am very grateful. This new edition is part of an ongoing project to critically edit Maimonides’ medical works that have not been edited at all or have been edited in unreliable editions. The project started in 1995 at the University College London, with the support of the Wellcome Trust, and was continued at the University of Cologne with the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It resulted in the publication of critical editions of Maimonides’ On Asthma (2 vols.), Medical Aphorisms (5 vols.), On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs, On Hemorrhoids, On Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art, On Coitus, and On the Regimen of Health. The first ten volumes in the series were published by the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative at Brigham Young’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. From On Coitus on, the publication is continued by E.J. Brill, Leiden. I thank Felix Hedderich and Fabian Käs for their great help in checking the proofs.