Highlighting a Plagiarism in a Medical Dictionary: Comparison between the Two Works "Kitāb ul-Māʾ" and "Qāmūs al-Aṭibbā wa Nāmūs al-ʾAlibbā"

 Plagiarism or plagiarism means attributing another word to oneself. "Kitāb ul māʾ", a medical dictionary of the fifth century AH, was written by Abdullah bin Muhammad Azdi and edited and published by Hamoudi in 1996. The purpose of this study is to explore the text and content of the two works "Kitāb ul māʾ" and "Qāmūs al-aṭibbā wa Nāmūs al ʾAlibbā" to provide a logical answer to the hypothesis of plagiarism of this medical work.

 This original qualitative research, with the method of content analysis and data matching, was carried out between the two works "Kitāb ul māʾ" and "Qāmūs al-aṭibbā wa Nāmūs al ʾAlibbā". Similarities and textual differences were studied and detailed notes were taken. To increase reliability, second-hand resources, comprehensive library software of medicine (version one), library of Islamic history, history of Islamic Iran were used; Also the keywords "Kitāb ul māʾ", "Madyan ibn Abd al-Rahmān Quṣunī", "Qāmūs al-aṭibbā", "plagiarism", "ʿAbdullāh ibn Muhammad Azdī" in other centers and databases such as Noormags, Scopus, SID PubMed, Magiran and Google scholar were searched.

Ethical Considerations: 

In the present study, the ethical aspects of library study including originality of texts, honesty and trustworthiness have been observed.

 The adaptation of this dictionary with the book "Qāmūs al-aṭibbā wa Nāmūs al ʾAlibbā" by Quṣunī, in the eleventh century AH, shows a striking similarity between the content of these two works. The only significant difference between the Quṣunī book and the Azdī book is the order of the entries. Arrange the words arrangement in "Kitāb ul māʾ" is based on the root of an abstract triad from its beginning (Fa'al-Fʿil), which is called the Eastern order. But the order of the "Qāmūs al-aṭibbā", unlike the "Kitāb ul māʾ", is from the end of the root (Lam al- Fʿil), which is called the Maghribi order.

 This study shows that Quṣunī thoroughly copied "Kitāb ul māʾ" in his work, albeit with a change in the alphabetical order of the words appearance in the dictionary.