Introducing and Reviewing the Written Manuscript ‘Dastoor-al-Alaj’

Abstract

Dastoor-al-Alaj is the medical work of Sultan Ali Khorasani, a doctor of the Uzbek court who, after forty years of practicing and traveling with Koch Konji Khan, has compiled it on the request of Sultan Mahmood Uzbek. There are more than thirty copies of this book, which is a quasi-literary text, available in libraries in Iran and across the world. At the time of Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan's rule, Sultan Ali added a sixteen-chapter introduction to the book. In the existing versions, this sixteen-chapter introduction does not appear, but is available as a separate book. In lithographs, the introduction is placed at the beginning of the book. By referring to the lists, several versions of the book were identified. Subsequently, with the study of the historical books of the Safavid period and the books that introduced the Persian medical texts, the few books available on the Uzbek dynasty. However, some data were obtained about the Uzbakan and the book ‘Dastoor-al-Alaj’. Among other things, the information about Sultan Ali was very small and confined to what appears in the book's preface. In the content of Dastoor-al-Alaj, some features of the syntax of Arabic language, such as the consistency of adjectives, the verbs of the beginning, as well as the use of ancient Persian verbs, old words and imitation of old styles could be seen. From the point of view of the principles of writing, the observance of continuous writing in compound words, the segregation in the current prefixes, and adherence to the writing of the consonant ‘A’ are the main features of this book. This study is based on the oldest and the most complete version of the book.

Keywords

• Dastoor-al-Alaj
• Sultan Ali Khorasani
• manuscript
• Medicine