| This dissertation seeks to contribute to the understanding of two manuscript copies of the Kitāb al-diryāq [Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, arabe 2964, dated 1199 CE, and Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, A.F. 10, thirteenth century CE] as illustrated books. This interdisciplinary study departs from traditional art-historical methodology, and approaches the impetus for the illustration of the Kitāb al-diryāq as a function of the intersection of literary and artistic trends.; The first section of the study ‘situates’ the text within the history of Arabic literature. While the treatise has traditionally been regarded as a scientific, or ‘pseudo-scientific’ work, a close reading of the text reveals its true identity. In form, the Kitāb al-diryāq is an Arabic biographical dictionary, a characteristic form of Arabic biographical literature. In content, the treatise concerns the theriac, the famed ‘universal antidote’ of Antiquity. The book's unifying feature as a collective biography is the physicians' contribution to the development of the theriac; each physician's recipe follows his biography.; The Kitāb al-diryāq manuscripts date to a period that saw the flowering of book illustration and an overall expansion of figural imagery in Islamic art. In Arabic literature, the period saw the peak in popularity of the literary genre of biography. Building upon this new understanding of the Kitāb al-diryāq's text, this dissertation presents a new interpretation of the artistic significance of the manuscripts now in Paris and Vienna. The construction of an analytical typology for the manuscripts' illustrations leads to the conclusion that they form a text-specific pictorial program comprising an open cycle of portraiture. In contrast to previous scholarship, this study proposes that the manuscripts' biographical form provided a strong impulse to figural illustration.; The problematic issue of the manuscripts' provenance is addressed in the concluding section of the study. Based on stylistic and iconographic affinities with other artistic media, the Kitāb al-diryāq manuscripts are usually attributed to Northern Mesopotamia. This dissertation considers the relationship of the illustrated Kitāb al-diryāq with unillustrated, but carefully illuminated, manuscripts that are probably Syrian in origin, and suggests a new center of patronage and/or production for manuscripts historically attributed to Northern Mesopotamia. |
