The text presented here to the public dates from the middle of the 11th century CE; its author is the Nestorian physician ʿUbaidallāh Ibn Buḫtīšūʿ, ¹ who was born in Baghdad but spent most of his life in Maiyāfāriqīn, Upper Mesopotamia, where he died sometime after the year 450/1058. ²

The Arabic title of the text is Kitāb Taḥrīm dafn al-aḥyāʾ “Book on the Prohibition to Bury the Living”, behind which is hidden a most remarkable medical analysis of the intricate state known as apparent death. ʿUbaidallāh Ibn Buḫtīšūʿ framed his expositions as a commentary (tafsīr) on a small treatise which he believed was composed by Galen, but which in fact is a pseudepigraph dating from presumably the 6th century CE; the Greek original of this treatise is lost, but it had been translated into Arabic around the year 800CE, perhaps through a Syriac intermediate; much later, at the beginning of the 13th century CE and based upon the Arabic, a Hebrew translation was made, too.

In the present book, ʿUbaidallāh Ibn Buḫtīšūʿ’s Arabic commentary, which incorporates the pseudo-Galenic treatise, is critically edited from the sole surviving manuscript, translated into English with annotations, and made accessible through a variety of indices; moreover, two independent Arabic versions of the underlying treatise, as well as its Hebrew recension, are appended for comparative purposes.