Paradise of Wisdom

In total, the Firdaws al-ḥikma has 360 abwāb or chapters.[3] The encyclopedia also has seven anwāʿ or parts covering a range of topics such as Aristotelianism; embryology; anatomy; dreams; psychology; nutrition; toxicology; cosmology; astronomy; and Indian medicine.[3]

al-Tabari offers a remedy for each disease he describes; for instance, he suggests, quoting Galen, that colic may be cured with wolf feces.[4] Apart from Galen, al-Tabari extensively quotes other Greek authorities including Alexander of Aphrodisias; Archigenes; Aristotle; Democritus; Dioscorides; Hippocrates; Pythagoras; and Theophrastus.[2] He also quotes several of his Arabic contemporaries.[3]

Additionally, the Firdaws is replete with al-Tabari's personal accounts of "peculiar phenomena"[5] like a monkey-like man who "coveted the coitus just like monkeys do",[6] a fire bolt that destroyed a Zoroastrian temple,[7] and a stone "that provokes abortion".[8]

Completed by Tabaristan-based physician Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari around 850 and dedicated to Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil,[9] the work is believed to be the "first all-inclusive medical compendium"[3] and one of the earliest Islamic medical encyclopedias,[10] if not the earliest.[11][12][13] According to University of Birmingham professor David Thomas, it became "a foundation text for medical practitioners in the Islamic world."[14]

British Iranologist Edward G. Browne died in 1923, while editing and translating the encyclopedia; the project was subsequently completed and published by Browne's protege Muhammad Zubair Siddiqi in 1928.[15]