Shabbethai Donnolo

Shabbethai Donnolo (913 – c. 982, Hebrew: שבתי דונולו‎) was a Graeco-Italian Jewish physician, and writer on medicine and astrology born at Oria, Apulia. When twelve years of age he was made prisoner by the Arabs under the leadership of the Fatimite Abu Ahmad Ja'far ibn 'Ubaid, but was ransomed by his relatives at Otranto, while the rest of his family was carried to Palermo and North Africa. He turned to medicine and astrology 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 from Baghdad. According to the biography of Nilus the Younger, abbot of Rossano, he practiced medicine for some time in that city. Later he would become the Byzantine court physician. The alleged gravestone of Donnolo, found by Abraham Firkovich in the Crimea, is evidently spurious.

Donnolo is one of the earliest Jewish writers on medicine, and one of the few Jewish scholars of South Italy at this early time. What remains of his medical work, Sefer ha-Yaḳar (Precious Book), was published by Moritz Steinschneider in 1867, from MS. 37, Plut. 88, in the Medicean Library at Florence, and contains an "antidotarium," or book of practical directions for preparing medicinal roots. Donnolo's medical science is based upon Greco-Latin sources; only one Arabic plant-name occurs. He cites Asaph the Jew.

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