Amin al-Din Rashid al-Din Vatvat

Who is Amin al-Din Rashid al-Din Vatvat?

Amin al-Din Rashid al-Din Vatvat was a 13th-century Persian physician.

The National Library of Medicine possesses an untitled Persian treatise on general preparation of food and drink which gives the author as Amin al-Din Rashid Vatvat and specifies that it was composed for Arghun Khan who ruled from 1284 to 1291CE.

A much shorter treatise on the same topic, also written by the order of Arghun Khan, is preserved in another untitled manuscript where the author is given as Amin al-Din Rashid al-Din Otaji. A Persian tabular treatise on the same topic written by Amin al-Din Otaji and dedicated to Mahmud Ghazan Khan is preserved in two copies.

For both these treatises see C.A. Storey, Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, volume II, part 2: E. Medicine, p. 217 no. 373.

The treatise now at the National Library of Medicine, with author given as Amin al-Din Rashid Vatvat, is presumably by the same author whose name appears as Amin al-Din Rashid al-Din Otaji in other manuscripts.

This Amin al-Din Rashid al-Din Vatvat cannot be the same person as Rashid al-Din Muhammad al-Umari Vatvat who lived in the 12th century and wrote in the name of the governor of Khvarazm to two prominent physicians in Baghdad, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdad and Ibn al-Tilmidh asking them to recommend a physician from amongst their students who could take over al-Jurjani's position as court physician following his death around 1136CE. For this earlier Rashid al-Din al-Vatvat, see Lutz Richter-Bernburg, Persian Medical Manuscripts at the University of California, Los Angeles: A Descriptive Catalogue, Humana Civilitas, vol. 4, p. 3.