Catalogue: Pharmaceutics

Fī Ittikhādh mā’ al-jubn wa-manāfi‘uhu wa-kayfiyat isti‘mālihi   (MS A 1.1, item 2)

(The Virtue of Cheesewater and its Uses and the Manner of its Application)

فى اتخاذ ماء الجبن ومنافعه وكيفية استعماله

apparently by Abū Ḥamid Muḥammad ibn ‘Alī ibn ‘Umar Najīb al-Dīn al-Samarqandī

ابو حامد محمد ابن على ابن عمر نجيب الدين السمرقندى

For other copies of Najīb al-Dīn al-Samarqandī's essay Fī Ittikhādh mā’ al-jubn wa-manāfi‘uhu wa-kayfiyat isti‘mālihi (The Virtue of Cheesewater and its Uses and the Manner of its Application), see A.Z. Iskandar, 'A study of al-Samarqandi's medical writings', Le Museon, vol. 85 (1972), p. 460 note 61.

Only one other copy appears to be recorded (Mosul, Madrasat Yahya Pasha MS 14). The copy at NLM lacks an author's name, but it is likely that it is the treatise by the same name attributed to al-Samarqandi, since it occurs in a manuscript immediately following a well-known treatise by al-Samarqandi. The only other recorded copy was not available for comparison.

Physical Description

Arabic. 2 pages (pp. 31-33). Dimensions 23.4 x 15.7 (text area 16.5 x 10.5) cm; 23 lines per page. The title Fī Ittikhādh mā’ al-jubn wa-manāfi‘uhu wa-kayfiyat isti‘mālihi (The Virtue of Cheesewater and its Uses and the Manner of its Application) is given on p. 31, line 1. The copy lacks an author's name, but it is probably also by Najīb al-Dīn al-Samarqandī, as a previous item in the volume is by him and because a short treatise of this title by him is extant in one other copy (Mosul, Madrasat Yahya Pasha MS 14); see A.Z. Iskandar, "A study of al-Samarqandī's medical writings", Le Museon, 85 (1972), p. 459-460.

The copy was made by the same person who transcribed the first item in the volume, which was completed during the last ten days of the month of Ramadan (al-‘ashr al-akhir min Ramadan) 740 (= March 1340) by the copyist Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd Allāh, called (al-mulaqqab bi-) al-Shams al-Tasatturī the physician (al-mutaṭabbib).

The text is written in a small naskh script, in black ink. There are headings in red and also in a large black script. The letters ‘ayn and the gutteral ha' often have minuscule letters beneath them, especially in rubricated words. The letter sin often has three dots beneath. There are catchwords.

The thick, lightly-glossed, biscuit paper has indistinct wavy laid lines and no chain lines. The paper is fibrous with uneven patches. There is some soiling through thumbing and some dampstaining.

The volume consists of 37 pages. Pages 28-30 and 34 are blank. Item 1 (pp. 1-27) is al-Adwiyah al-mufradah al-musta‘malah bi-khawaṣṣhā wa-af‘ālhā al-mashhūrah bi-hā bi-hā by Najīb al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (MS A 1.1, item 1), item 2 (p. 31-33) is here catalogued, and item 3 (p. 35-37) consists of recipes for remedies (MS A 1.1, item 3).

Binding

The volume is bound in a modern library binding of blue cloth over pasteboards with a black leather spine. There are modern paper pastedowns and endpapers.

Provenance

There are impressions of a small round owner's stamp on both p. 1 and p. 27 that has the name ‘Abd Amīn Muḥammad and is dated 1165/1751-2. The same stamp is to be found in NLM MS A 28.

Purchased from A. S. Yahuda (ELS No. 1664, Med. 33); received by the Armed Forces Medical Library in September 1954, from the office of Dr. Claudius Mayer.

References

Hamarneh, "NLM", p. 99.

NLM Microfilm Reel: FILM 55-43 no. 6

NLM Microfilm Reel: FILM 69-30 no. 4