Ibn Waḥshiyya | |
|---|---|
| ابن وحشية | |
 Manuscript of The Nabataean Agriculture | |
| Died | 930–1 CE (318 AH)[1] |
| Notable work | The Nabataean Agriculture |
| Era | Islamic Golden Age |
| Region | Kufa (Iraq) |
| Language | Arabic |
Main interests | Agriculture, botany, toxicology, alchemy and chemistry, magic |
Ibn Waḥshiyya (Arabic: ابن وحشية), died c. 930, was a Nabataean (Aramaic-speaking, rural Iraqi) agriculturalist, toxicologist, and alchemist born in Qussīn, near Kufa in Iraq.[2] He is the author of the Nabataean Agriculture (Kitāb al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya), an influential Arabic work on agriculture, astrology, and magic.[3]
Already by the end of the tenth century, various works were being falsely attributed to him.[4] One of these spurious writings, the Kitāb Shawq al-mustahām fī maʿrifat rumūz al-aqlām ("The Book of the Desire of the Maddened Lover for the Knowledge of Secret Scripts", perhaps 1022–3 CE),[5] is notable as an early proposal that some Egyptian hieroglyphs could be read phonetically, rather than only logographically.[6]
- ^ Hämeen-Anttila 2018.
- ^ Hämeen-Anttila 2018. On Qussīn, see Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān, IV:350 (referred to by Hämeen-Anttila 2006, p. 93).
- ^ Hämeen-Anttila 2006, p. 3.
- ^ Hämeen-Anttila 2018.
- ^ For the spurious nature of this work, see Hämeen-Anttila 2006, pp. 21–22. See also Toral-Niehoff & Sundermeyer 2018.
- ^ El-Daly 2005, pp. 57–73. Stephan 2017, p. 265 affirms that the author correctly deciphered a few signs and that he showed some knowledge on the nature of Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, according to Stephan, El-Daly "vastly overemphasizes Ibn Waḥshiyya's accuracy". El-Daly's characterization of pseudo-Ibn Wahshiyya's and other contemporary Arabic authors' interest in the decipherment of ancient scripts as representing a coordinated research program, and as lying at the foundations of modern Egyptology, was found lacking in evidence by Colla 2008. On pseudo-Ibn Wahshiyya, see also Toral-Niehoff & Sundermeyer 2018.