Raggetti Lucia, ῾Īsā ibn ῾Alī’s Book on the useful properties of animal parts: Edition, translation and study of a fluid tradition (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2018), xxxvi-591 p.

Lucia Raggetti, ̔Īsā ibn ̔Alī’s Book on the useful properties of animal parts: Edition, translation and study of a fluid tradition (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2018), xxxvi-591 p. In the volume reviewed here, Lucia Raggetti presents an outstanding editio princeps and English translation of an early fundamental Arabic work on the medico-magic science of sympathetic qualities. The book of over 600 folio pages is the result of many years of intense scholarly work, as it is based on the editor’s Ph. D. thesis defended in 2012. For her meticulously written edition of the “ Book on the useful properties of animal parts ” (Kitāb manāfi ̔ a ̔ḍā ̓ al-ḥayawān 1) by the Christian physician ̔Īsā ibn ̔Alī (late 3rd/9th century), Raggetti used seven manuscripts 2 representing three different branches of its “ fluid ” textual tradition. Since these redactions differ in many respects, she rightly decided not to (re-)construct one single text, but to edit all three versions in parallel columns and to present three separate English translations, highly welcome to all readers not mastering Arabic. This modus operandi, although rather unusual in the field of Arabic studies, is absolutely justified, when a definitive reconstruction of the author’s autograph version – or at least a textus receptus – is impossible. Already in antiquity, many natural substances – and especially body parts of animals and humans – were supposed to own a mysterious “ natural property ” (Greek ; Arabic ḫāṣṣa, pl. ḫawāṣṣ) analogous to the manifest