SIGNED QAYMAS IBN 'ABDULLAH AL-QASIMI, MAMLUK CAIRO, DATED 28 DHU'L-QADA AH 823 / 4 DECEMBER 1420 AD

Details

QADI 'IYYAD IBN MUSA (D.1149 AD): KITAB SHIFA' AL-SHARIF
SIGNED QAYMAS IBN 'ABDULLAH AL-QASIMI, MAMLUK CAIRO, DATED 28 DHU'L-QADA AH 823 / 4 DECEMBER 1420 AD
A treatise on the virtues of the Prophet, Arabic manuscript on paper, 229ff. plus two flyleaves, each folio with 23ll. black naskh, section headings picked out in red, the margins with copious annotations in various hands, catchwords, colophons signed and dated, opening folio with library stamps, in contemporaneous brown leather binding with flap decorated with tooled medallions, the doublures of marbled paper, some wear and restoration to the edges of the opening and closing pages, one replaced quire
Folio 10 ¼ x 7 ¼in. (26.2 x 18.3cm.)

Provenance

Demir 'Ali Arza, Korçë, Albania, 1905,
thence by descent

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Lot Essay

Although the scribe of this manuscript is not recorded elsewhere, in the colopon he is referred to as 'al-maliki al-mu'ayyadi', which may indicate that he was a slave of Sultan al-Mu'ayyad Shaykh (r.1412-21). This seems to have been al-Qasimi's personal copy, and at the back of the manuscript he records the births of his three sons, Ahmad in AH 825⁄1422 AD, Ibrahim in AH 827⁄1424 AD, and 'Abd al-Rahman in AH 831⁄1428 AD.

The opening folio describes the reading history of the text in Egypt, describing how Qaymas studied the text under a certain Hafiz Shebab al-Din Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Ahmad al-Hakkari, tracing the transmission back to a reading in Egypt in Shawwal AH 668/May-June 1270 AD, and further back to Abu'l Fadl.

For a note on the provenance of this manuscript, see lot 107.

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