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Oriental medical manuscripts in Uzbekistan, Vesalius, VI, 2,100-104, 2000Fig. 2 A 18th century copy of the medical manuscriptof Ibn Al-Nafis (d. 1288/89). Arabic. The collection ofthe State Medical School library, Tashkent.in Arabic. Being a lingua franca of the educatedpart of the Moslem world, Arabic was not aspoken language in Central Asia since the Mongolinvasion of the 13th century. In fact, the Uzbeklanguage belongs to the Turkic group of languages,and the Tadjik relates to the Persian language.Nearly all the manuscripts are written in Naskh orNastalik scripts. Many manuscripts have specificIslamic decorations, and some works have anatomicaldrawings.manuscript TehakAstamana ("Measures AgainstMasturbation") by Imamuddin b. Sheikh MuhammadOmar b. Sheikh Pir-Muhammad, written in1830 (16). This work presents views of the Naqshbandidervish sheikh on the problem of masturbation.There are 32 pharmacological treatisesincluding, for example, Ihtiyarot Badiai(Pharmacopoeia) of AN b. Hussein al-Ansari ofthe 17th century. Rasael (masael) al-usul ila (fi)masael al-fusul is a treatise on human anatomywritten by Mansur b. Muhammad b. Ahmad in1404 at the court of Timur (17). The rare treatiseon paediatrics, Tahfat al-Maasumin, was writtenby Salikh al-Kandahari in Bukhara between 1785and 1800 (18). There are also several works onophthalmology (19), cardiology, psychiatry,hygiene, and even medical astrology. There arealso 44 works of anonymous authors. Some ofthese manuscripts have no usual Moslem religiousblessing (bismilla) in the beginning of the book.Presumably these works were written by theJewish doctors and additional research is neededto reveal names of some of them.There are numerous works in Arabic, but themain languages of the Uzbek Academic Collectionare Persian and Uzbek. The medical works ofthe Uzbek Collection, however, are written mainlyThe collection of the library of the TashkentMedical School has 93 Oriental medical manuscripts.These collection has no catalogue. Specialpermission from the Rector of the School isneeded to get access to the collection. The collectionis kept in a room of a one-storey hundredyears old library building. The room is dark andsunlight does not affect the books. The room hasno ventilation. The collection grew up by specialefforts of the Russian doctors of the 1890's -1920's who hunted the rare medical manuscriptsall over Uzbekistan. The majority of these manuscriptswere written in the 19th century, but manyof them are actually copies of books composed500-700 years earlier. For example, there is a19th century copy of a medical poem Muftah al-Hikma ("A Key to Wisdom"), written by DarvishMuhammad Hakim-i Kilasabadi in the 13th century(20).There are four medical manuscripts in thiscollection written in Judeo-Persian, or in theJudeo-Tadjik dialect of Judeo-Persian, byanonymous Jewish authors. One of these manuscriptsis pure magical, and contains numerousincantations for healing. Another manuscriptcontains numerous medical aphorisms and ispresumably a copy of an older treatise.The Supreme Islamic Council of Uzbekistanhas a rich collection of Oriental manuscripts. Notall of them are religious. There is no officialcatalogue of the collection but it is said that itcontains up to a thousand manuscripts. Specialpermission from the religious authorities is needed102