Filāḥah al-Nabaṭīyah. (Nabatean agriculture). Part 5

Filāḥah al-Nabaṭīyah. (Nabatean agriculture). Part 5 Opening. The Filāḥah al-Nabaṭīyah contains agricultural and botanical information and a wealth of facts concerning popular customs, religion and magic. It is the most important of the works ascribed to Ibn Waḥshīyah, an 'author' whose very existence has been called into question. Whether real or fictional, Ibn Waḥshīyah is famous as a transmitter of supposedly ancient Babylonian writings. In the Filāḥah he claims that he translated the work from the 'language of the Chaldees' (i.e. Syriac) into Arabic in the year 904, but that the book was written thousands of years before by a certain Babylonian, who drew on even older works. Opinions differ on whether the Arabic really was translated from the Syriac; some scholars favouring a Pahlavi (Middle Persian), or a Greek original. This book was extremely popular in the Islamic world, despite its pagan character.