'Abdul-Rashid Ibn Saleh Ibn Nuri al-Bakawi, Talkhis al-athar wa 'aja’ib al-malik al-qahhar, a treatise on geography, copied by Michael Ibn Nicholas Ibn Ibrahim Sabbagh, Paris, dated 1803

Arabic manuscript on watermarked European paper, 129 leaves plus a flyleaf, 12 lines to the page, written in black ink, f.1a with heading and coloured world map, f.1b with inscriptions in a European hand in French and Latin, various annotations in Arabic and French throughout, later brown leather binding with tooled medallions, with flap

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This manuscript reflects the interests of various French Orientalists in the literature of the Arab World from the seventeenth century onward. The present manuscript is a copy of a further copy (produced in 1733) of an early manuscript of al-Bakawi's Talkhis al-athar wa 'aja’ib al-malik al-qahhar, dated 816 AH/1413 AD in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Folio 1a of the manuscript carries an inscription at the top stating that the original manuscript of al-Bakawi was brought back to Paris by 'Lacroix' in 1683, referring to François Pétis de la Croix (d.1713), the French orientalist. On the following page, the inscriptions in French and Latin state the history of the earlier copies, mentioning the names of the French orientalists Joseph de Guignes and Joseph Ascari.  

The scribe of the present copy of the manuscript is Michael Ibn Nicholas Ibn Ibrahim Sabbagh (d.1846). Interestingly, he was known to have been a translator for the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte during his campaign in Egypt. The present work, Talkhis al-athar wa 'aja’ib al-malik al-qahhar, is not recorded in Brockelmann and Arberry.