PAL

Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus

_ (the underscore) is the placeholder for exactly one character.
% (the percent sign) is the placeholder for no, one or more than one character.
%% (two percent signs) is the placeholder for no, one or more than one character, but not for blank space (so that a search ends at word boundaries).

At the beginning and at the end, these placeholders are superfluous.

Tehran, Kitābkhāna-yi markazi-i Dānishgāh-i Tehrān, F 2885⁢⁢⁢⁢

[Microfilm scans of the textblock; colour photographs of the cover and selected double pages presented in auction descriptions.]
A collection of four works: Arabic.  Date:

Ptolemaic work dated to the last day (salkh) of Jumādā l-ūlā 678/​7 October 1279 (152v); other works undated.

Or.:

unknown, probably Kayseri (50r); unknown copyist, stated by Dānishpazhūh to be the Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh mentioned below. The Ptolemaic work and part of its marginalia were copied from a manuscript in the hand of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, who had transferred them from an autograph (152v). Thus the present copy of al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī may have been the exemplar of MS Paris, BnF, ar. 2485 . The first work was copied from a codex transferred by Quṭb al-Dīn from an autograph dated 20 Rajab 663/​8 May 1265 (23r). The second work was collated at the Muʿiniyya madrasa in Qayṣariyya in early Rabīʿ al-awwal 678/​mid July 1279 against a copy by the hand of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī read to the author (50r); this included the replication of a note that the scribe found in the exemplar, written in al-Ṭūsī’s hand and dated 8 Ramaḍān 661/​16 July 1263, stating that the text was read by (!) al-Shīrāzī after having been copied from an autograph (50r).

Prov.:

ownership statement by Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Mawāqītī, dated to the end of Jumādā l-thāniya 704 (1r, under the title of treatise 1); ownership statement by Aḥmad b. ʿĀbd Allāh al-Mawāqītī (24r, under the title of treatise 2); a note of transfer from Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Marāfī (sic) to the scholar Ismāʿīl al-Khujafī (?) on Friday, 19 Dhū l-qaʿda 745/​25 March 1345 (1r). A wish for success in studying this book, by Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. ʿĀlī al-Munajjim, dated 975/​1567-8 (1r). Three notes defining a right angle, a surface, line and point, and the mean motion of the planets, as well as a long note on the model of Saturn (24r, all four in the same small script). A note on the motions of the planets and their parameters (50r). Statement of transfer to Muḥammad Taqī l-Munajjim, with his rectangular seal (1r); statement by Muḥammad Ṣādiq b. Muḥammad Taqī, who received the manuscript from his father (1r); calligraphic signature of Muḥammad Ṣādiq al-Munajjim (1r, 24r, 50r, 54r); a long note by Muḥammad Ṣādiq al-Munajjim praising the Kitāb al-Tadhkira and al-Ṭūsī (24r, starting at the top right and then enclosing the above-mentioned note on Saturn); a long note by Muḥammad Ṣādiq al-Munajjim praising the Zīj-i Ilkhānī and al-Ṭūsī (53v–54r); statement of transfer from Muḥammad Sādiq al-Munajjim to his son Muḥammad Ashraf, with the former’s oval seal (1r); a note of inheritance from Muḥammad Ashraf b. Muḥammad Sādiq al-Munajjim to his son, with a rectangular seal (1r); these four owners were members of a well-known Safavid family of astronomers from the city of Gonabad in eastern Iran, the first-mentioned Muḥammad Taqī being the son of Muḥammad Qāsīm al-Munajjim, known as Mullā Muẓaffar, who was in the service of Shah ʿAbbās (r. 1587–1629). A note on the Persian scholar Imām Sirāj al-Dīn Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf al-Sakkākī (555/1160–626/1229) (Iv), a short note on solar motion (Iv), and a mathematical proposition on fractions (1r), all three by the same nastaʿlīq hand; a very long Persian note, filling nearly all remaining space and framed by a continuous line, stating that all the works included in this volume (nuskhahā kih dar īn mujallad) are by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, are in Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī’s hand, and were collated against the autographs (1r). Statement of transfer to Muḥammad Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad Riḍā al-Ḥusaynī, with an oval seal (Iv). Several philosophical notes and quotations, all anonymous and undated, and some Arabic and Persian poems (Ir). An illegible round seal (2r). Microfilmed by the University of Tehran in 1344 hs/​1965 from the collection of a certain Arfaʿ, probably the poet and bibliophile Hādī Ṣādiqpūr, known as Arfaʿ-i Kirmānshāhī (personal communication, Sajjad Nikfahm). Auctioned by Christie’s in April 2018. Sold for € 190,000 by Oriental Art Auctions (Netherlands) in November 2020.

Cod.: paper, I+153+Ia ff. (foliated with Hindu-Arabic numerals at the top right of versos; a separate foliation of the Ptolemaic work with Hindu-Arabic numerals on rectos; catchwords). A single brown naskh hand; dotted ductus, frequent tanwīns and some hamzas. Book headings in the Ptolemaic work in bold enlarged thuluth; section numbers in bold black overlined abjad, section titles in red; proposition numbers in overlined abjad in the margins; abjad and Hindu-Arabic numerals as well as geometrical points in the text in red and/or overlined. Diagrams with red lines and black geometrical points, in some parts of the codex entirely in black. Tables with red lines; a rosette with Greek translations for some of the labels added by a user (106r). Codex in good condition; some damage by insects towards the end; spine restored. Dimensions: 24.4×16.6 cm; 31 lines per page in the first two works, 29 lines in the last two. Very elaborate fourteenth- or fifteenth-century brown morocco-leather binding with a blind-tooled central stellar motif and geometric borders; scrolling arabesque doublures (Christie’s). Type III binding.

Cont.: mathematics, astronomy. — Index: a list of books edited by al-Ṭūsī found in a multi-text volume in the hand of al-Shīrāzī (Iv; includes all four treatises contained in this codex); table of contents (1r; with the title of the missing treatise 5 in Persian by a different hand); 1] Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Jawāmiʿ al-ḥisāb bi-l takht wa-l-turāb (1v–23r, with authorial colophon); a quotation (qāla al-muṣannif) on a geometrical theorem, with commentary (23v); 2] al-Ṭūsī, Tadhkira al-hayʾa (24r–50r); 3] al-Ṭūsī, Taḥrīr al-masākin li-Thāwdhūsiūs (50v–53r); 4] Ptolemaica (54r–152v). The appendix on the configurations of the Mercury model (C.1.18a) is listed in the table of contents on f. 1r but is not in fact included in the microfilm; Dānishpazhūh only gives its title, possibly on the basis of the table of contents. Blank: Iar and presumably Iav.

Bibl.: Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, Fihrist-i mīkrūfīlmhā-yi Kitābkhāna-yi Markazī-yi Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, vol. I, Tehran: Dānishgāh-yi Tihrān, 1969 (1348 H.S.), p. 738–739; FankhāMuṣṭafā Dirāyatī, Fihristgān-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-yi Īrān (Fankhā), 45 vols, Tehran: Library, Museum and Documentation Center of The Islamic Consultative Assembly, 2011–13 1390, vol. VII, p. 212 (no. 5), and furthermore vol. II, p. 375; vol. VII, p. 218 (no. 5) and p. 956 (no. 16), and vol. X, p. 954 (no. 4); LAMTMª José Parra, ‘A List of Arabic Manuscripts of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī’, Suhayl 16–17 (2018–2019), pp. 251–322, p. 207 (no. 122); Christie’s, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds. Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets. Thursday 26 April 2018, London: Christie’s, 2018, pp. 50–53 (lot no. 36). — . Oriental Art Auctions: https://www.orientalartauctions.com/object/artisla48291-a-compendium-of-treatises-on-astronomy-and-mathematics-1279-nasir-al-din-al-tusi-died-1274.

54r–⁠152v

\54v\ أحمد الله مبدأ كلّ مبدأ وغاية كلّ غاية ومفيض كلّ خير ووليّ كلّ هداية وأرجو حسن توفيقه في كلّ بداية ونهاية — \152v\ فلنختم الكتاب أقول وإذ وفّقني الله تعالى أيضًا لإتمام ما قصدته وإنجاز ما وعدته ولأقطع الكلام حامدًا له على آلائه ومصلّيًا على جميع أوليائه خصوصًا على خاتم أنبيائه والبررة من آله وأحبّائه.

= Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (C.1.18)

. — Title: Kitāb Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (54r). — Alternative title: Kitāb al-Majisṭī (1r). — Index: title page with notes by one of the owners, 54r; preface, 54v; Book I, 54v–65v; II, 65v–73v; III, 73v–80r; IV, 80r–88v; V, 88v–98r; VI, 98r–106r; VII, 106r–112v; VIII, 112v–120r; IX, 120r–132r; X, 132r–135r; XI, 135r–141v; XII, 141v–146r; XIII, 146r–152v. — No authorial colophon; dated scribal colophon. Occasional marginal corrections. Numerous marginal and interlinear glosses.