Made in Arabic
syrup
الشَّراب
A leaf from an Arabic translation of the Greek physician Dioscorides' book on medicines, copied by ʿAbdullah ibn al-Fadl in 1224: a doctor stirs honey and water in a boiling cauldron to make a medicine for a seated patient to drink. Arab pharmacists called such drinkable medicines ashriba, singular sharāb. Medieval Latin took it as siropus, French as sirop, and English as syrup.
- Instrument
- a leaf from an Arabic translation of Dioscorides' Materia Medica, Iraq, 1224
- Written on it in Arabic
- In a line under the painting: «when this sharāb is drunk, it should first be strained».
The path between languagesšarāb → siropus → sirop → syrup
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ملكٌ عامّ
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