For several Arabic-Persian medical terms according to „Tsigni Saakimoy“

Abstract

„Tsigmi Saakimoy“ (The Book of Medicine) is one of the earliest surviving Georgian medical manuscripts of the thirteenth century. The work was studied and published in 1936 by Dr. Lado Kotetishvili. Based on textual and terminological analysis, scholars have argued that the original text was written in Arabic by an Arab physician. This conclusion is supported by the predominance of Arabic medical terminology, the ethnic composition of the cited authorities (mainly Arab physicians), and the absence of Persian equivalents alongside many Arabic terms, suggesting that Persian elements were introduced by later scribes in the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries. Ekvtime Takaishvili dated the Arabic original between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries and noted its dependence on the Canon of Medicine by Avicenna. Ivane Javakhishvili identified 1206 as the date of its Georgian translation and attributed it to Khoja. This study extracts Arabic–Persian medical terminology from the 1936 edition and verifies it using Arabic and Persian lexicographical sources. The findings demonstrate that most lexical units entered Georgian while preserving their original phonetic structure; although some forms are archaic, many remain in active use in modern medical terminology.