8vo. English with some Arabic text, [1], 212 pp., cloth in d/w, appendices, indices, previous owner’s book plate verso front cover, small mark on front jacket, otherwise copy clean inside & in very good condition, E. J. Brill, Leiden, first edition, 1971.

Synopsis

Rare work. “The Herb is the first comprehensive attempt since Silvester de Sacy to unravel the strange and portentous history of cannabis in the Muslim world from the twelfth century to the sixteen century as it unfolds in the Arabic sources. Most of these sources are in manuscript. They have been collected and discussed and one of them also published in the original text”. (Leaf Jacket).
Professor Rosenthal was a prolific and highly accomplished scholar who contributed much to the development of source-critical studies in Arabic in the US. His publications range from a monograph on Humor in Early Islam to a three-volume annotated translation of the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun to a Grammar of Biblical Aramaic. For his translation of the Muqaddimah, he traveled to Istanbul and studied the manuscript there, among them Ibn Khaldun’s autograph copy. His 1952 History of Muslim Historiography was the first study of this enormous subject. He wrote extensively on Islamic civilization, including The Muslim Concept of Freedom, The Classical Heritage in Islam, The Herb: Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society, Gambling in Islam, On Suicide in Islam and Sweeter Than Hope: Complaint and Hope in Medieval Islam, as well as three volumes of collected essays and two volumes of translations from the history of the medieval Persian historian al-Tabari, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1970).