Lot 12
  • 12

Mahmud ibn Massud Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (d.1311), Kulliyat al-Qanun, a commentary on the first volume of Al-Qanun of Ibn Sina, book II, Egypt, Mamluk, dated 739 AH/1338-39 AD

Estimate
18,000 - 25,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • ink on paper - bound manuscript
  • 23.2 by 16.2cm.
Arabic manuscript on paper, 185 leaves, 27 lines to the page, written in naskh script in black ink, important words and sentences in red, f.101a with half-page coloured diagram of the River Nile from its source, f.1b a later replacement, in later brown leather binding

Condition

In good condition, the margins overall clean with minor annotation, minor stains and holes, the first page a later replacement and the last leaf with the colophon has been waxed, some rubbing, as viewed.
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Catalogue Note

Brockelmann records the title as Al-tuhfa al-sa’diya sharh kulliyat al-Qanun by Mahmud ibn Massud Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (GAL II, p.274). The first page of this manuscript is a later replacement and it is likely that the title has been shortened to Kulliyat al-Qanun. This early copy, written fewer than three decades after the death of the author, is a commentary on the Qanun of Ibn Sina. As recorded by Emily Savage-Smith, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi composed several versions of the commentary on the Qanun, with different titles, the one in Brockelmann identified as the final one (Savage-Smith 2011, p.258). The Bodleian Library also houses a manuscript with an autograph inscription of Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (inv.no.MS. Huntington 263).
Images of the Nile in commentaries of the Qanun by Ibn Sina are unusual but not unheard of. A drawing of the river is on f.115b of the Sharh kulliyat al-Qanun by Ibn al-Nafis, now in the Bodleian Library (inv.no.MS Huntington 102, Savage-Smith 2011, pl.XXVI), whilst another illustration very similar to the present can be found in a commentary by Ibn al-Nafis attributed to Mamluk Egypt, sold in these rooms, 7 October 2015, lot 208.