Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ar. 4821
six of the treatises are dated to the months Rajab–Ramaḍān 544/1149-50 (23r, 29r, 33v, 36v, 46r, and 75v), and most others are by the same two hands; only ff. 8v–9r are in a much later hand dated Tuesday, 17 Jumādā l-ūlā 744/7 October 1343.
Or.:Hamadan and Asadabad; copied by al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī and three unknown scribes.
Prov.:ownership statement by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b. Muʾayyad al-Rūmī al-Amāsī (the well-known collector who also owned MSS Oxford, BL, Thurston 3 and Berlin, SBPK, Or. oct. 3031, d. 922/1516), dated 8 Jumādā l-ūlā 891/12 May 1486 in Constantinople (1r, middle of the page, with three imprints of his round seal); three works in al-Amāsī’s table of contents are indicated by a later user not to be included in the manuscript any more (see below). Ownership statement by al-Amāsī’s son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Muʾayyadī, who, like his father, also owned MS Oxford, BL, Thurston 3 (1r). Ownership statement by ʿAlī b. Amr Allāh b. Muḥammad dated Rajab 970/February–March 1563 (1r). Ownership statement by Sulaymān b. Yūsuf … al-Ḥunayn dated Ramaḍān 1077/February–March 1766 (1r). Ownership statement by Ḥusayn Ḥalabī dated 14 Muḥarram 1089/8 March 1678 (Iv). Undated ownership statements by Ismaʿīl b. Muḥammad al-madʿū and Muṣṭafā b. ʿAlī (1r). Various titles for the entire volume (e.g., majmūʿa rasāʾil handasiyya, Ir). Librarian’s note dated 8 August 1887 (Ir). Old shelfmark: ‘Suppl. arabe 2666’ (Ir).
Cod.: paper, I+86+Ia ff. (library foliation with Arabic-European numerals; identical earlier foliation with Hindu-Arabic numerals; traces of quire numbers, partially with folio numbers within the quires, at the top right of rectos (cf. Guesdon); catchwords added later, possibly by the same hand as the Hindu-Arabic foliation). One main hand and two additional contemporaneous hands, all three in a very clear brown and in some parts black naskh, and all three largely undotted and without shaddas or hamzas. Main hand (including all three Ptolemaic works and three works copied from a manuscript in the hand of al-Sijzī): a large, angular script. Additional hand I: 1v–8r, 10v–16v. Additional hand II (al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī): 29v–36v. Ff. 8v–9r in a much later, sloppier naskh hand, written sideways. Geometrical diagrams in all parts of the manuscript except ff. 82r–86v, drawn in the same colours as the main text, with red used only for the lines in the diagrams on ff. 10v–16v. Two astronomical tables on ff. 81r–v and an astrological table on f. 86v. Manuscript in good condition with ink corrosion in some parts (ff. 17–29, 37–46, and 69–81) and occasional minor damage by insects in others (ff. 10–15 and 28–34); the bottom half of f. 46 was cut off, but without any loss of the body text. Dimensions: 23×15 cm; 16–19 lines per page. Quarter leather binding, main area of covers decorated with rough floral motifs in dark red and green, stamped on paper. Type III binding, previously Type II (traces of the flap on f. Ir).
Cont.: Geometry and astronomy. —
Bibl.: Edgar Blochet, Catalogue des manuscrits arabes des nouvelles acquisitions (1884–1924), Paris: Leroux, 1925, p. 25; George Vajda, Notices de manuscrits arabes rédigées par George Vajda (Arabe 4820-4843) (unpublished typescript, MS arabe 7304/7), Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1940–1969, pp. 2–5; Georges Vajda, ‘Quelques notes sur le fonds de manuscrits arabes de la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 25 (1950), pp. 1–10, here pp. 7–9; Marie-Geneviève Guesdon, ‘La numérotation des cahiers et la foliotation dans les manuscrits arabes datés jusqu'à 1450’, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 133–144 (2002), pp. 101–115, here notes 3 and 33. BnF Archives et manuscrits: https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc325078; Islamic Scientific Manuscript Initiative: https://ismi.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/codex/161050. — The non-Ptolemaic treatises were studied in Jan P. Hogendijk, ‘Greek and Arabic Constructions of the Regular Heptagon’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 30 (1984), pp. 197–330; Jan P. Hogendijk, ‘al-Kūhī’s Construction of an Equilateral Pentagon in a Given Square’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 1 (1984), pp. 100–144; Richard P. Lorch, ‘Abū Jaʿfar al-Khāzin on Isoperimetry and the Archimedean Tradition’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 3 (1986), pp. 150–229, here pp. 212–215; Roshdi Rashed, Les mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe aux XIe siècle. Vol. I: Fondateurs et commentateurs. Banū Mūsā, Ibn Qurra, Ibn Sinān, al-Khāzin, al-Qūhī, Ibn al-Samḥ, Ibn Hūd, London: Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1996, pp. 830–833 (English translation in Roshdi Rashed and Nader El-Bizri, Founding Figures and Commentators in Arabic Mathematics. A History of Arabic Sciences and Mathematics, vol. I, New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 577–578); Glen Van Brummelen and J. Lennart Berggren, ‘Abū Sahl al-Kūhī on the Distance to the Shooting Stars’, Journal for the History of Astronomy 32 (2001), pp. 137–151, and Roshdi Rashed, ‘Al-Qūhī: From Meteorology to Astronomy’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 11 (2001), pp. 157–204, esp. pp. 172–173 and 176–185.
47v–67v
|
\47v\ = Abū Jaʿfar al-Khāzin, Sharḥ al-Majisṭī (C.1.6)
, extract from the commentary on Book I. — |
---|---|
69v–75v
|
\69v\ = Maslama al-Majrīṭī, Taʿālīq ʿalā Kitāb Baṭlamyūs fī Tasṭīḥ basīṭ al-kura (C.6.1)
. — |
76r–81v
|
\76r\ = Maslama al-Majrīṭī, Faṣl laysa min al-kitāb min kalām Maslama b. Aḥmad (C.6.2)
. — |