The Middle Eastern region is an important area that includes the Levant region, called the Fertile Crescent, and Mesopotamia, known as the cradle of civilization. Moreover, two major commercial trade routes, in ancient times, the Silk Road and the Spice Route passed through this area. Traditional knowledge about medicinal plants is very valuable because of the deep-rooted history of the region. This knowledge was sometimes recorded in herbal and other texts. The oldest medical knowledge and practices were found in Ebers papyrus dated to ca.1500 BC in Egypt. In the Arabian Peninsula, Ibn Sina (Avicenna 980–1037) one of the greatest and most famous Islamic doctor authors of The Canon of Medicine (Kitab al-Qanun fi al-Tibb) included many descriptions of the uses of medicinal plants. Although there are historical herbal texts, traditional knowledge and practices of medicinal plants was generally transmitted orally. In this region, where intense migration is experienced due to political disagreements and human conflicts, this knowledge tended to disappear, therefore, it needs to be recorded and evaluated.
In this Research Topic, we aim to emphasize the traditional use of medicinal plants in the Middle Eastern region because, despite the rich biodiversity of the region, only certain countries have been studied as a result of regional problems. Furthermore, we aim to record traditional knowledge of medicinal plants in this multicultural region where ethnobotanical studies are scarce, to present the obtained data to the scientific community from as many countries in the region as possible, and to inspire and encourage the search for ethnopharmacological resources. Thus, the discovery of traditional medicines may lead to the adaptation of traditional medicine for modern health systems.
The scope of this Topic is to encourage submissions (Original Research and Review articles) from countries in the Middle East (Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Morocco). We accept submissions highlighting past and present in the traditional use of medicinal plants, including but not restricted to:
• Ethnopharmacological surveys and Ethnobotanical studies.
• Conservation and sustainable use of herbal resources.
• Biodiversity, chemodiversity and chemotaxonomic studies of plants used in traditional medicine.
• Quality and composition of plant material, extracts, and pure compounds of traditionally used medicinal plants.
• Phytochemical analysis of plants used in traditional medicine if they are linked to medical uses.
• Bioactivity and mechanism of action studies on chemically defined extracts and isolated plant-metabolites.
• Formulation studies on traditional herbal preparations/prescriptions.
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All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here).