Abstract

Sefer ha-Hanhagah is a fragmentary text that contains only the introduction to an originally larger work on the different kinds of food, their properties, names, and suitability for different human bodies. This larger work survives only in a Latin translation by Accursius de Pistoia (fl. 1200), entitled De dissolutione continua. Sefer ha-Hanhagah lacks unity and covers a wide variety of subjects, including: the necessity of consuming food; the suitability of different kinds of food for human bodies; exercise and sleep; appetite; coarse foods; habit. It concludes that proper diet requires detailed knowledge about the properties of the different kinds of food and the different natures of human bodies. Sefer ha-Hanhagah is not identical with any extant treatises composed by Galen on the preservation of health or on diet. Given its pseudo-Galenic character, it is possible that Sefer ha-Hanhagah is a summary of original Galenic material. A possible source of this work is the summary of Galen's De alimentorum facultatibus reportedly produced by Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq. Ḥunayn claims that he drew on the Greek original of this work and on a number of other works containing much of what the ancients said about the subject of nutrition to prepare a summary in Syriac. This work he subsequently divided into three parts and translated into Arabic as the K. al-aghdhiya (Book on foodstuffs). Ḥunayn's statement that he consulted a number of works tallies with our impression that Sefer ha-Hanhagah is a composite work. Still, we cannot be certain that Sefer ha- Hanhagah indeed goes back to Ḥunayn, for it is possible that Zeraḥyah Ḥen's belief that the text he translated goes back to Ḥunayn was erroneous.

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