Shabbethai Donnolo (913 – c. 982,Hebrew:שבתי דונולו) was aGraeco-Italian[1] Jewish physician and writer on medicine and astrology.
Donnolo was born inOria, Apulia. When he was twelve years old (4 July 925), he was taken prisoner by Arabs under the leadership of theFatimidamirAbu Ahmad Ja'far ibn 'Ubaid, but was ransomed by his relatives inOtranto, while the rest of his family was carried toPalermo andNorth Africa. He turned to medicine andastrology for a livelihood, studying the sciences of "the Greeks, Arabs, Babylonians, and Indians." As no Jews at that time busied themselves with these subjects, he traveled in Italy in search of learned non-Jews. His special teacher was an Arab fromBaghdad. According to the biography ofNilus the Younger, abbot ofRossano, Donnolo practiced medicine for some time in that city. Later he would become theByzantine court physician. The alleged gravestone of Donnolo, found byAbraham Firkovich in theCrimea, is evidently spurious.[citation needed]
Donnolo is one of the earliest Jewish writers on medicine, and one of the few Jewish scholars ofsouthern Italy at this early time. What remains of his medical work,Sefer ha-Yaqar "Precious Book", was published byMoritz Steinschneider in 1867, from MS. 37, Plut. 88, in theMedicean Library inFlorence, and contains an "antidotarium," or book of practical directions for preparing medicinal roots. Donnolo's medical science is based on Greco-Latin sources;[2] only one Arabic plant-name occurs. He citesAsaph the Jew.
In addition, he wrote a commentary to theSefer Yetzirah, dealing almost wholly with astrology, and calledḤakhmoni (in one manuscript,Taḥkemoni; seeSecond Book of Samuel 23:8;I Chronicles 11:11). At the end of the preface is a table giving the position of the heavenly bodies inElul of the year 946. The treatise published byAdolf Neubauer[3] is part of a religio-astrological commentary on theBook of Genesis 1:26 (written in 982), which probably formed a sort of introduction to theḤakhmoni, in which the idea that man is amicrocosm is worked out. Parts of this introduction are found word for word in the anonymousOrchot Tzaddikim (orSefer Middot) and theSheveṭ Musar ofElijah ben Solomon Abraham ha-Kohen. It was published separately byAdolf Jellinek.[4]
Donnolo's style is worthy of note; many Hebrew forms and words are here found for the first time. He uses theacrostic freely, giving his own name not only in the poetic mosaic of passages from theBook of Proverbs in theBodleian fragment, but also in the rimed prose introduction to theḤakemani. He is also the first to cite theMidrash Tehillim. In the Pseudo-Saadia commentary to theSefer Yetzirah. There are many citations from Donnolo, notably from a lost commentary of his on theBaraita of Samuel.Abraham Epstein has shown that extensive extracts from Donnolo are also to be found inEleazar of Worms'Sefer Yetzirah commentary (ed. Przemysl, 1889), even to the extent of the tables and illustrations. He is also mentioned byRashi,[5] byIsaac ben Samuel of Acre (who calls theḤakemani theSefer ha-Mazzalot), and bySolomon ben Judah of Lunel (1424) in hisḤesheq Shlomoh toJudah Halevi'sKuzari.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Richard Gottheil (1901–1906)."Shabbethai Donnolo". InSinger, Isidore; et al. (eds.).The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.Its bibliography:
