RĀZĪ, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā (c.854-925) - photo 1
RĀZĪ, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā (c.854-925) - photo 2
RĀZĪ, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā (c.854-925) - photo 3
RĀZĪ, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā (c.854-925) - photo 4

RĀZĪ, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā (c.854-925)

Lot 150
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1514478
Lot 150 | RĀZĪ, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā (c.854-925)
Estimate value
£ 40 000 – 60 000
RĀZĪ, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā (c.854-925)
Ob usum experientiamque multiplicem, et ob certissimas ex demonstrationibus logicis indicationes, ad omnes practer naturam affectus, atque etiam propter remediorum uberrimam materiam, summi medici opera exquisitiora. Translated from Arabic into Latin by Gerard of Cremona (c.1114-1187) and Giorgio Valla. - Andreas VESALIUS (1514-1564). Paraphrasis in nonum librum Rhazac ... ad regem Almansorem. Edited by Alban Thorer (1489-1550). Basel: Heinrich Petri, March 1544.
Vesalius’ first published work, in its third printing, collected in Alban Thorer’s Latin edition of the Persian physician al-Rāzī: extremely rare on the market and once owned by a 16th-century Oxford medic. Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā Rāzī was a doctor, alchemist, and philosopher born in late-9th-century Ray (now part of Tehran). After studying and practicing medicine in Baghdad, al-Rāzī returned to Ray to serve as director of its hospital at the invitation of Prince Mansur ibn Ishaq, the city's governor: it is to Mansur that al-Rāzī dedicated one of his early works, the Kitāb al-Manṣūrī (in Latin, the Liber Almansoris), a medical textbook for students, divided into ten books on topics such as diagnostics, physiognomy and surgery. The first Latin translation is thought to have been produced by Gerard of Cremona towards the end of the 12th century; it was one of the works emanating from the so-called Toledo School of Translators in response to the demand for access to Arabic medical texts in the medieval west, which circulated widely across Europe and shaped the scientific thinking of the first universities. All the works collected here are in Gerard of Cremona’s translations, with the exception of three: Book IX and X of the Liber Almansoris were translated by Vesalius and Thorer respectively, and Giorgio Valla translated the Liber de pestilentia, one of the works collected alongside the Liber Almansoris, including De morbis infantium, Aphorismorum, Antidotarius and De facultatibus partium animalium. Vesalius first published his Paraphrasis of the ninth book of the Liber Almansoris in 1537, at the age of 22, as his bachelor’s thesis from the University of Leuven. It subjects Rāzī to the authority of Galen and represents his first published contribution to the humanist campaign of the early 16th century to substitute Arab influences in European medicine with Greek ‘original’ sources. The Paraphrasis was published in two separate editions of 1537, before its third printing in Thorer’s Opera exquisitiora of al-Rāzī. According to RBH, no copy of the Opera exquisitiora has appeared at international auction in over a quarter of a century (Norman collection, Christie’s New York, 18 March 1998, lot 176). The 1537 second edition of Vesalius’ Paraphrasis was sold in Berlin in 2011 for 47,120 Euro (Jeschke van Vliet Auctions, 26 March 2011, lot 149). Adams R-224; NLM/Durling 3313; Waller 7923; Wellcome 5460; Norman 2140.

Folio (285 x 190mm). Roman, Italic and Greek types. Printed side notes. Printer’s woodcut device on last verso, ornamental woodcut initials (dampstain touching top edge of first and last few leaves, title and colophon pages very lightly frayed with discreet repairs at edges). Late 17th- or early 18th-century blind-tooled calf over boards, modern endleaves (rebacked, lacking clasps and straps, the leather rubbed and with some losses most pronounced at edges and corners). Provenance: Probably Humfry Hall (BMed Oxon. 1561); the dated motto ‘In utraq[ue] fortuna fides: 1562 Septemb[ris] 9’ added on the title is the same that appears in a 1555 edition of Vesalius (HB4, St John’s College, Oxford) with the name ‘H. Hall’ supplied. The profuse marginal annotations in Latin across the book, comprising technical notes on the text, are apparently his – ‘? Wyllmsen’ (erased 17th-century English ownership inscription on title, perhaps contemporary with the current binding) – Royal Society of Medicine (ink stamp on title [Medical and Chirurgical Society]).
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