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📘 Playfair translated a Persianate Indian materia medica for Calcutta's medical profession

The Taleef Shereef, or Indian Materia Medica is George Playfair's 1833 English translation of a work associated with Hakim Muhammad Sharif Khan and the Unani medical tradition. Playfair says that after decades of practice in India he had se

2
lessons
~10 min
to learn
Adults
level
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What you’ll learn

  1. Translation and the Unani systemPlace the 1833 Calcutta volume as Playfair's edited translation of a Unani materia medica and teach its internal categories.Playfair published for colonial medical peers using qualities, tastes, humours, and a four-degree potency scale — not modern pharmacology.
  2. Reading entries with cautionShow how entries stack speakers, preparation, and editorial omission — and why recipes are historical evidence, not instructions.Mango and mudar exemplify ascribed virtue versus translator's trial; sorcery articles were cut; Gutenberg warns against self-treatment.

Questions this course answers

What is The Taleef Shereef?

Playfair's title page and preface identify it as a translation published in Calcutta in 1833.

How does the book describe a medicine's action?

The entries and appendix use a Unani framework of qualities, tastes, humours, formulas, and degrees of power.

Why should a reader not follow the recipes?

The modern edition warns that the prescriptions have been superseded or invalidated and that some are dangerous.

What does the omitted material reveal?

A closing note says that materials associated with sorcery and incantation were omitted with the translator's permission.

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