Catalogue: Natural History

[On Winds and Rain]   (MS P 27, item 3)

No other copy of this anonymous and untitled Persian essay on winds and rain has been identified.

MS P 27, fol. 40b

The top six lines on this folio are the end of an anonymous and untitled Persian treatise on winds and rain, while the text written diagonally over the rest of the folio is the beginning of an Arabic treatise on numerology attributed to Zosimos. The Persian treatise was copied in 1721 (1133 H) in the city of Kashan. The Arabic text was probably added not long thereafter.

Persian. 1 leaf (fols. 40a, line 6-40b, line 6). Dimensions 21.4 x 16.6 (text area 16.3 x 9.8) cm; 22 lines per page.

The copy was transcribed by the same copyist as transcribed the first item in the volume, which was completed at Kashan in the month of Rajab 1133 (= 28 April-27 May 1721) by the scribe ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Faḍl Allāh al-Kāshānī.

The text is written in a medium-small naskh script with pink-red overlinings (which may have been added later) and a few headings in about the same color. The first three items in the volume are by the same copyist.

The beige paper is nearly matte-finished and has no laid lines or chain lines visible; the edges have been trimmed from their original size. The paper is grease and damp stained and soiled through thumbing. Repairs have been made to fol. 1.

The volume consists of 41 leaves. Fol. 1a is blank except for penciled note (Collection: Risalat Jābir) attributing the volume to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān and an undeciphered phrase in Persian script. Fols. 1a-39a (item 1) contain Kitāb Nihāyat al-ṭalab fī sharḥ Kitāb [al-‘ilm] al-Muktasab dar zirā‘at-i dhahab by al-Jaldakī (MS P 27, item 1); fols. 39b-40a (item 2) a Persian treatise on the smelting of iron), attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (MS P 27, item 2); folios 40a-40b an untitled short anonymous Persian essay on winds and rain here catalogued; fols. 40b-41b are an Arabic untitled treatise on numerology whose author is given as Zosimos (MS P 27, item 4); and fol. 41b, lower two-thirds, contains an Arabic alchemical chapter from Kitāb al-‘Ilm al-makhzūn fī mufāriḍah attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (MS P 27, item 5).

The volume is bound in a red leather modern library binding with envelope flap; modern pastedowns and endpapers.

There is an owner's stamp on fol. 41b (not legible).

The volume was purchased in 1941 by the Army Medical Library from A.S. Yahuda (ELS 2357 m. 127).

Schullian/Sommer, Cat. of incun. & MSS., entry P 27 item 3, p. 339.

NLM Microfilm Reel: FILM 48-137 no. 2

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