Penn in Hand: Selected Manuscripts

Majūsī, ʻAlī ibn al-ʻAbbās, active 10th century-11th century.

[Kāmil al-sināʻah al-tibbīyah] ... [etc.] [manuscript].

[Catania], [circa 1443-1452]

307 leaves : paper ; 156-196 x 105-140 mm bound to 212 x 175 mm + 3 bifolia (202 x 127 mm folded)

15th-century Sicilian medical miscellany in Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew, and Arabic, compiled by David ben Shalom, likely a Jewish physician. The most significant work is a Judeo-Arabic copy of al-Majūsī's Kāmil al-sināʻah al-tibbīyah, which comprises most of the volume; this is an overview of medicine, arranged in five chapters on anatomy, five chapters on symptoms, nine chapters on treatment, and one chapter on surgery (f. 40r-307v). Preceding and following the al-Majūsī text are contemporaneous notes and medical works (f. 15v-20v, 25r-39v, 40r-52v, 211r-307v), including a Judeo-Arabic transcription of Saʻid ibn Hibat Allāh ibn al-Ḥusayn's Mughnī fī tadbīr al-amrāḍ (a reference work giving the name, etiology, symptoms, and treatment of various diseases) copied in Catania probably in 1443 by Abū al-Ḥasan Sa'ad ben Hibat Alla ben al-Ḥasan the physician (al-ṭabīb); and a Hebrew translation of part of Avicenna's treatise on cardiac drugs (the ninth chapter of the first book of the treatise and the beginning of the second) employing Arabic medical, botanical, and pharmaceutical terminology. When the volume was rebound (and misbound; some gatherings out of order after the fourth gathering and some folios missing between f. 277-278) in the 19th-century, probably in modern Israel, a group of smaller leaves of notes, not on medical topics, in Arabic, Samaritan, and Hebrew were bound into the front of the volume (f. 1r-14v), upside down.

Ms. codex.

Title for manuscript from title for predominant work supplied by cataloger.

Foliation: Paper, ii (20th-century library cloth and card) + early board + ii (19th-century paper) + 307 + i (20th-century library cloth); 1²⁶ 2²⁰ 3-4¹⁴ 5²⁴ 6-7¹⁴ 8²⁰ 9¹⁴ 10¹⁵ 11-14¹⁴ 15²⁰ 16-19¹⁴ (Les Enluminures); [1-22, i-vi (bifolia laid in), 23-38, 40-245, 245-307]; modern foliation in pencil, upper left recto; foliation with Hebrew characters in ink, upper left recto (f. 40r-278r), reflecting missing and misbound folios. Catchwords in the lower margin of most versos of the al-Majūsī text.

Layout: Predominant work written in 27 long lines, with headings in a larger script (f. 40r-307v).

Script: Written in Sephardic semi-cursive script with headings in square script (Les Enluminures), partly in the hand of Abū al-Ḥasan Sa'ad ben Hibat Alla ben al-Ḥasan the physician (f. 17v).

Decoration: Manicules (f. 130r, 246r, 271r); some text in red ink and decorative borders in red and black ink in 19th-century Samaritan notes (f. 1v-7v); title page for a small notebook with decorative ink border, dated 1810 (f. 14v).

Watermarks: Pirie's Old Style, 19th-century Samaritan bifolia (f. 21-22, 3 bifolia laid in); unidentified bell watermark on some leaves (Les Enluminures).

Binding: Modern library cloth, 20th century; one board of 19th-century binding inside modern flyleaves at front of volume, with colored, patterned paper pastedown.

Origin: One section written in Catania, Sicily, in 1443 (f. 17v; determined from a chronogram by Tzvi Langermann); predominant text includes a date of 1452 (f. 169v; suggested from a chronogram by Les Enluminures).

UPenn Ms. Codex 1649.

Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts University of Pennsylvania Ms. Codex 1649