« Housni Alkhateeb Shehada’s
Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam
is the first comprehensive study of veterinary medicine, its practitioners and its
patients in the medieval Islamic world, with special emphasis on the Mamluk period
(1250-1517). Based on a large variety of sources, it is a history of a scientific
field that is also examined from social and cultural perspectives. Horses, as well
as birds of prey used for hawking and falconry, were at the centre of the veterinary
literature of that period, but the treatment and cure of other animals was not totally
neglected. The Mamluk period is presented here as the time when veterinary medicine
reached its pinnacle in medieval Islam and often even surpassed human medicine. »
Présentation de l’éditeur (2012)