Yaḥyá ibn Biṭrīq

The volume consists of 227 folios and 5 preliminary leaves. Folios 2−226 were written by the same copyist and on the same type of paper and consist of twenty-eight numbered quires of eight folios each (except the first quire of seven folios and some disturbance in the two middle quires). Traces of Arabic numerals are visible in the upper left corners of some of the quires; on the lower left-hand corners upper-case letters of the Roman alphabet have been written, in sequence, beginning with folio 9 (labelled B). The letter S occurs on the quire beginning with folio 130, T on folios 138a and then again on folio 146a, V on folio 148a, X on folio 154a, Y on folios 162a, and Z on folio 170a. Thereafter, the alphabet repeats, with each letter given in both upper case and lower case (‘Aa’on folio 178; ‘Ff’ on folio 218). There are seven later owners’s notes (names not legible) and couplets written on folio 2a. Folio 2b is blank. The upper half of folio 3a has been defaced; the label Kitāb fī al-ṭibb has been written on it in brown ink, and on the lower half of the folio miscellaneous medical notes have been added by the same hand as added paragraphs to other folios within the treatise. Folio 227a (with horizontal laidlines and chain lines in groups of 3s) has two recipes: one for ulceration taken from Quṭb Shīrāzī [= Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī who died in 710/1311] and an eye remedy ‘belonging to the West’ (shiyāf lil-gharb) said to be from the Aqraādhīn of one Filānīsī (فلانيسي). On folio 227b there are even more casually written recipes, several for maʿjūns. Folio 1 is not a part of the original set of quires labelled with Latin letters. Folio 1 is of different paper (no visible laid or chain lines) and was at one time folded; folio 1a has later notes in five different hands written at various angles, including an Arabic note stating the number of leaves to be 225, a Latin notation of subject, a Persian couplet, and a recipe that is repeated in a different hand on the facing folio (preliminary folio vb). Folio 1b has eight recipes written in very casual hands, includng one taken from the Minhāj al-dukkān (written in 658/1260 by al-Kūhīn al-ʿAṭṭār al-Hārūnī al-Isrāʾīlī (fl. 658/1260). On preliminary folio vb a piece of paper similar to that of folio 1 has been pasted on. The five preliminary leaves (front endpapers) are of watermarked paper (shield and the letter JC). On preliminary folio iiia the number from the Golius Sale Cat. is recorded as well as the number N. 229 and the catalogue number as in UAM; there is also a Latin label from a spine, probably on the volume before rebinding in the nineteenth century, now pasted onto folio iiia, and a note by Steinschneider written in 1852 identifying the author, incorrectly, as Ibn el Talmid. The remaining preliminary folios are blank. — ?13th cent. MS. Marsh 537

2 works by 2 authors on the subject of Kings and rulers — 14th cent.? [lacking a leaf or two at end] MS. Laud Or. 210

The volume contains 130 leaves. It is a collection of miscellaneous pieces in Persian and Arabic in an unusual format. Through the greater part of the volume, four (and sometimes five) different texts run side by side on the same page. The centre of each page usually has two columns of writing; some treatises will be written in the right column of the front-side of a leaf and continued in the left-hand column of the back-side, while others will occupy the left column of the front-side of a leaf and the right-hand column of the back-side; the item catalogued here falls in the latter category. For a list of the other items, see the Concordance of Manuscripts (Appendix I)in Emilie Savage-Smith; A New Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Volume I: Medicine, Oxford: OUP, 2011, and SEB I, cols. 1093−6 no. 1904, for further details. MS. Huntington donat. 18