Catalogue: Pharmaceutics

[On Medicinal Plants]   (MS A 91, item 11)

This is a fragment of an untitled, anonymous, treatise on medicinal plants, in alphabetical order beginning with the letter kha'.

No other copy has been identified.

Physical Description

Arabic. 6 pages (pp. 183 [old 189] to 188 [old 194]). Dimensions 21.5 x 15.7 (text area 16.5 x 10.5) cm; 21 lines per page. No author or title is given.

The copy is undated and unsigned. The appearance of the paper, script, and ink suggests a date of the 17th or 18th century.

The first of the text is missing. Pages 187-188 in the old pagination are missing, and these would have contained the beginning of this treatise. The text ends abruptly at the bottom of page 188 [old 194] with a catchword that does not correspond to the text on the following page.

The text is written in a medium-small naskh script, with black ink and headings in red. It is a fluid script with a number of ligatures. There are catchwords. This hand appears to have been responsible for most of the items in the volume.

The volume has been paginated rather than foliated. The volume has been recently repaginated in Western numerals. There is an early pagination in Arabic numerals which places the numeral 15 on the first page of the present volume, with the subsequent numbering containing some mistakes and omissions. Therefore, it is evident that the first 14 pages of the manuscript are now missing. According to this earlier pagination, there are also leaves missing after pp. 44 (old 58), 182 (old 186), 188 (old 194), and 220 (old 227). There are also section numbers (nos. 40-694) in the margins, and this marginal numbering is continuous, unbroken by missing leaves, except at the beginning, indicating that it was written after the later missing leaves disappeared but before the opening leaves were lost. The page references are to the Western pagination, followed by the old pagination.

The same paper has been used throughout the volume. It is a thick, glossy, light-beige (darkened near the edges) paper with laid lines, single chain lines, and watermarks. The paper is greatly soiled by thumbing and with grime, and is waterstained near the edges. The edges have been repaired on several leaves.

The volume consists of 268 leaves. Item 1 (pp. 1-44) is the Mu‘alajat al-amrāḍ al-khaṭirah al-bādiyah ‘alá al-badan min khārij by Ibn al-Kattānī (MS A 91, item 1). Item 2 (p. 44) untitled and anonymous writing on foodstuffs (MS A 91, item 2); item 3 (p. 45) an untitled and anonymous collection of compound remedies (MS A 91, item 3); item 4 (pp. 46-91) is a therapeutic mujarrabat manual by Muḥammad ibn Khamrah (MS A 91, item 4); item 5 (pp. 91-96) an anonymous treatise titled Risālah fī khawāṣṣ al-panzahr (MS A 91, item 5); item 6 (pp. 97-103) contains recipes (MS A 91, item 6); item 7 (pp. 103-106) is an anonymous discourse titled al-Qawl fī faḍl al-fatīḥah (MS A 91, item 7); item 8 (pp. 106-109) an anonymous essay titled Ṣifat ma‘jūn nāfi‘ lil-ma‘idah (MS A 91, item 8); item 9 (pp. 110-119) in an essay on Prophetic traditions by al-Shaykh Abū al-‘Abbās known as Ibn al-Mīlaq, or Ibn Maylaq (MS A 91, item 9); item 10 (pp. 120-182) an anonymous treatise Kitāb al-Khawāṣṣ (MS A 91, item 10); item 11 (pp. 183-188) is here catalogued; item 12 (pp. 189-253) on compound remedies (MS A 91, item 12); item 13 (pp. 254-262) is al-Jawhar al-fard fī mufākharat al-narjis wa-al-ward possibly by Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī ibn al-Musharraf al-Māridīnī (MS A 91, item 13); and the final item (pp. 262-268) are anonymous recipes (MS A 91, item 14).

Binding

The volume is bound in a dark-brown leather modern library binding. There are modern paper pastedowns and endpapers.

Provenance

At the lower right corner of p. 96 [old 110] there is an owner's inscription stating that the owner (sahibuhu wa-malikuhu) was al-Sayyid Muḥammad al-Ḥakīm.

The volume was purchased in 1941 by the Army Medical Library from A. S. Yahuda who acquired it from a dealer in Damascus, Syria (ELS 1700 Med. 31).

References

Schullian/Sommer, Cat. of incun. & MSS., entry A91 item 2, p. 329. This item is not included.

NLM Microfilm Reel: FILM 48-130, no. 1