Text page from a Materia Medica of Dioscorides

This page is one of about thirty folios, now dispersed among various public and private collections, originally belonging to a codex in the Suleymaniye Library, Aya Sofya, Istanbul. The manuscript, of which the major part is still in Istanbul, contains a colophon giving the name of the scribe -- who may also have been the painter, 'Abd Allah ibn al-Fadi -- and the date, Rajab 621 (June-July, 1224).

Credit: John L. Severance Fund