The Ibn Buhtīsū' bestiary tradition. The text and its sources

The Ibn Buhtīsū' Book on the usefulness of Animals is extant in several copies, five of them illustrated. After giving an account of the text, the Author of the article investigates its sources, finding that they are two-folded: partly coming from a Greek tradition ultimately related to Aristotle's Zoology, and partly coming from Ibn Buhtīsū' medical writings, which seem to stem from the lengthy tradition of the famous School of Gondēsāpūr. A profile of the main representatives of the Ibn Buhtīsū' family, for the first time translated here from the Arabic sources, is also given.