Quotes About Dioscorides

In 958, Ibn Shaprut mediated between the warring Christian kings of Leon and Navarre. As the caliphate's chief diplomatic adviser, fluent in the colloquial Latin of Christian diplomacy, he managed to bring the two kings to Cordova to sign a treaty in front of the Caliph. These linguistic skills had been seen seven years earlier, after Constantine VII sent the Caliph a copy of Dioscorides

Dioscorides, an expert on medicinal plants, had ample material on which to base a pioneering treatise on bubonic plague.