[Therapeutic use of aromatic substances in al-Andalus ]

Aromatic substances were used for therapeutic purposes in the ancient Arabic world, as they were in other contemporary and earlier cultures. By the Tenth Century, the Oriental Islamic culture had developed a solid corpus on aromatic substances that were selected for that purpose. This paper is an introduction to the knowledge of these substances that had been attained in al-Andalus in the Eleventh Century (considered the "Golden Age" of Andalusian pharmacology), based on the comparative study of the Kitāb ŷawāhir al-tīb al-mufrada, by Ibn Māsawayh, and the Kitāh al-adwiya al-mufrada, by Ibn Wāfid.