On the Properties and Benefits of Coffee

Attributed to Muḥammad Badr al-Dīn al-Qūṣūnī

Abstract

This article presents a critical edition and analysis of a short 16th-century medical treatise entitled Fī bayān aḥwāl al-qaḥwa wa-ḫāṣṣiyyatihā wa-manāfiʿihā, attributed to the Ottoman court physician Muḥammad Badr al-Dīn al-Qūṣūnī. The base manuscript, preserved in Leiden University Libraries as Or. 945:16 (fol. 58r), is collated against two later versions: Ragıb Paşa, K. No. 1482, ff. 56 r–56 v, and al-Nūr al-sāfir ʿan aḫbār al-qarn al-ʿāšir. The treatise, which adopts a question-and-answer format to examine the properties and medicinal benefits of qaḥwa, ‘coffee’, offers insights into the role of coffee in early Ottoman medical discourse and into the adaptation of Galenic humoral theory to a new substance.