[Colour scanned images of the textblock and covers.]
Collection: Arabic.
Date:
seven of the treatises are dated to the months Rajab–Ramaḍān 544/1149-50 (23r, 29r, 33v, 36v, 46r, 75v, and 86r), 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 (d. 922/1516, the well-known collector who also owned MSS Oxford, Bodleian, Thurston 3 and Berlin, SBPK, Or. oct. 3031), dated 8 Jumādā l-ūlā 891/12 May 1486 in Constantinople (1r, middle of the page, with three imprints of his round seal). Ownership statement by al-Amāsī’s son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Muʾayyadī, who, like his father, also owned MS Oxford, Bodleian, 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. — Index: table of contents by al-Amāsī: 17 titles, with folio numbers and comments about missing items added later in red (1r; this table has the same format and is by the same hand as that in MS Oxford, Bodleian, Thurston 3, f. 1r); al-Qūhī, Risāla fī ʿAmal ḍilʿ al-musabbaʿ al-mutasāwī l-aḍlāʿ fī l-dāʾira (1v–8r); al-Suhrawardī, al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya (8v–9r, later addition); Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Sijzī, 〈Kitāb fī ʿAmal al-musabbaʿ wa-qismat al-zāwiya al-mustaqīmat al-khaṭṭayn bi-thalāthat aqsām mutasāwiyya〉 (10v–16v); al-Qūhī, Fī ʿAmal al-musabbaʿ al-mutasāwī l-aḍlāʿ fī dāʾira maʿlūma (17v–23r); Abū Ḥāmid Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Ṣaghānī, Risāla … al-Ṣaghāni ilā l-malik al-jalīl ʿAḍud al-Dawla … 〈fī ʿamal ḍilʿ al-musabbaʿ al-mutasāwī l-aḍlāʿ fī l-dāʾira bi-l-handasa al-thābita〉 (23v–29r); al-Qūhī, Risāla fī ʿAmal mukhammas mutasāwī l-aḍlāʿ fī murabbaʿ maʿlūm (29v–33v); al-Qūhī, Risāla fī Maʿrifat miqdār al-buʿd min markaz al-arḍ wa-makān al-kawākib alladhī (sic) yanqaḍḍu bi-l-layl (34r–36v); Abū l-Jūd Muḥammad b. al-Layth, Risāla ilā l-ustādh al-fāḍil Abī Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī al-Ḥāsib fī l-dalāla ʿalā ṭarīqay al-ustādh Abī Sahl al-Qūhī al-muhandis wa-shaykhi-hī Abī Ḥāmid al-Ṣaghānī wa-ṭarīqi-hī allatī salaka-hā fī ʿamal al-musabbaʿ al-mutasāwī al-aḍlāʿ fī l-dāʾira (37v–46r); Ptolemaica(47v–67v); Maqāla fī anna Saṭḥ kull dāʾira awsaʿ min kull saṭḥ mustaqīm al-aḍlāʿ mutasāwīhā mutasāwī l-zawāyā musāwiyya iḥāṭatuhu li-iḥāṭatihā (68r–68v, attributed to al-Sumaysāṭī in Rashed, Les mathématiques); Ptolemaica (69v–75v); Ptolemaica (76r–81v); Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, tract on terrestrial and cosmic dimensions translated from the Syriac (82r–82v, copied from a manuscript in the hand of his disciple ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan al-Qūmisī; cf. Gerhard Endress, The Works of Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī. An Analytical Inventory, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1977, p. 31); al-Nayrīzī, Maqāla fī Aḥdāth al-jaww (82v–86v). Three works listed in the table of contents are not any more included in the manuscript, namely al-Qūhī’s revision of Book II of Euclid’s Elements and a treatise on the sphere of the Earth by al-Khāzin (both originally after f. 68) and Ibn Sahl’s commentary on Ptolemy’s Optics (incomplete, at the end of the manuscript). Blank: Iv (except for an owner’s statement), 9v–10r, 17r, 37r (except for a tabular arrangement of the Arabic month names and abjad numbers from 1 to 1000), 46v–47r, 69r, Iar–v.
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 99–100 (2002) [special issue La tradition manuscrite en écriture arabe], 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\ [title] قال بطلميوس وإنّ الأشكال المختلفة التي إحاطتها متساوية ما هو منها أكثر زوايا فهو أعظم قدرًا ولذلك وجب أنّ الدائرة أعظم السطوح والكرة أعظم المجسّمات. يعني أنّ الأشكال المختلفة من ذوات الأضلاع المستقيمة كالمثلّث والمربّع والمخمّس وسائر ذلك إلى ما لا ينتهي — \67r\ فنصف قطرها وهو مح أقصر من بع ولكن ضرب مح في ثلث سطح الكرة جسم الكرة التي عليها دائرة تث أعظم من المجسّم فإذن الكرة أعظم المجسّمات المتساوية الإحاطة. \67v\ [diagram]
, extract from the commentary on Book I. — Title: Sharḥ Abī Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Khāzin li-l-maqāla al-ūlā min al-Majisṭī (47v). — Index: Proof that the area of a circle is larger than that of any regular polygon with the same perimeter, by means of ten numbered propositions: 47v–54r; proof that the volume of a sphere is larger than that of any solid body with the same surface-area, by means of nine unnumbered propositions: 54v–67r. No colophon. Overlined abjad numbers of the first ten propositions in the right margin. Several corrections and additions by the scribe of this treatise as well as by one of the other scribes of the manuscript in the margins and occasionally in the text. A large number of diagrams, apparently by the scribe. No glosses.
\69v\ [title] قال في الشكل الأوّل عند قول بطلميوس أعني أن تُجعل أوائل البروج على النقط التي عليها تُقسم الدوائر الموازية لمعدّل النهار التي تُرسم بالطريق الذي أوضحنا على البعد الموافق لبعد كلّ واحد من البروج من دائرة معدّل النهار في الكرة المجسّمة دائرة فلك البروج. — \75v\ وكذلك خطّ بع إن أخرج إلى ما لا نهاية لم يلتق مع خطّ جد وذلك ما أردنا بيانه. تمّ تعاليق مسلمة بن أحمد على كتاب بطلميوس في تسطيح بسيط الكرة والحمد لله وحده وفرغ من تعليقه بظاهر أسداباذ بالمعسر المنصور ... في دياحثمد وصلّى الله على سيّدنا محمّد.
\76r\ [title] قد ذكر بطلميوس في هذا الكتاب كيف ترسم دائرة الأفق والدوائر الموازية لها وهي المقنطرات وكيف ترسم دائرة فلك البروج والدوائر الموازية لها — \81r\ وأقرب القسمة إلى الصحّة هو أن تخرجه إلى المطالع في الفلك المستقيم بالعمل المتقدّم ثمّ تقسم دائرة الأفق بهذه المطالع كقسمتك دائرة البروج بمطالع الفلك المستقيم بخطّ نصف النهار فاعلم. [table] \81v\ [table] تمّت الفصول التي تحتاج إليها في عمل الأسطرلاب من زيادة مسلمة بن أحمد.
. — Title: Faṣl laysa min al-kitāb min kalām Maslama b. Aḥmad (76r). — Undated scribal colophon. Several additions and corrections in the margin. Four diagrams. The treatise concludes with a table of elevations of the vernal equinox for latitude 38;30° and a table of fixed stars. No glosses.
