Throughout History, every society has given names to the plants by following different rules. In Al-Andalus, where for almost eight centuries different cultures, languages and ethnic groups were interlinked, the process for creating new names, contributed by physicians, pharmacologists and botanists to the vast catalogue recorded in De Materia Medica by Dioscorides, reveals some striking peculiarities. Examples of this process can be found in the Kitāb ʻUmdat al-ṭabīb fī maʻrifat al-nabāt (Pillar Book of the Physicians for the Knowledge of Plants) by the Sevillian author Abū l-Jayr (11th – 12th century), which can be considered to be the first botanical work in its own right written in medieval Europe, and which will be analysed in this paper.

Peer reviewed