The present volume is part of a series of interdisciplinary projects aiming at editing Ibn al-JazzÄrâs medical handbook ZÄd al-musÄfir along with most of its extant medieval translations. We are grateful to the âDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaftâ (DFG) for generously funding our critical edition of the Arabic original and the annotated English translation between 2017 and 2019. The same foundation also supported the preparation of critical editions of the Hebrew translations by Moses ibn Tibbon (Sefer á¹¢edat ha-Derakhim), Abraham ben Isaac (Sefer á¹¢edah la-Oreḥim), and Doâeg ha-Edomi (Sefer Yaʾir Netiv).
At the moment, we are preparing critical editions of Books IIIâV, also funded by the DFG since 2020. One of the authors of the present volume (Gerrit Bos) has already published Books VI and VII of the ZÄd al-musÄfir in previous publications. We hope to be able to present the readership with the missing parts of the Arabic text, along with translations of Books IIIâV, in the near future. The entire text of all seven books will be made accessible online in collaboration with Brill. We decided to publish a detailed multilanguage glossary, including the terminology of Books I and II together with Books IIIâV. This will avoid unnecessary repetitions and will allow a more complete overview of the terminologies used in the translations. For this reason, the present publication only contains a concise register of English and Arabic terms.
We want to express our warmest thanks to our partners, Brian Long and Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, for the fruitful exchanges over the last few years. Unfortunately, for personal reasons, they were unable to join the project. A critical edition of the Byzantine translation entitled á¼Ïόδια Ïοῦ á¼ÏοδημοῦνÏοÏ, which we originally aimed at publishing as well, will, therefore, remain the subject of future research. The same holds true for parts of the Latin and Hebrew translations, especially of Books VI and VII.
We would also like to thank the editors of the IHC, Hinrich Biesterfeldt and Sebastian Günther, the anonymous reviewers, the staff of Brillâespecially Maurits van den Boogert and Teddy Dolsâfor all their efforts, Jessica Kley and Rebekah Zwanzig for copy editing our translation, and Felix Hedderich and Said Abouchdak for their assistance in collating the Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts.
Gerrit Bos, Fabian Käs, Michael McVaugh
August 24, 2021