Arabic manuscript on paper, 40 leaves, 17 lines to the page written in bold cursive script in black ink with significant words, letters and numbers picked out in red, catchwords, two diagrams, numerous tables, inscriptions written in Ottoman Turkish added at a later date, one inscription dated 8th Jumada al-Akhir 1001/12th March 1593, some soiling and discoloration, brown morocco with stamped central medallions decorated with intertwining floral motifs, worn, edges crudely repaired, with flap
209 x 148 mm.

Footnotes

An inscription, dated AH 1240/AD 1825-26, states that this manuscript was owned by a certain Muhammad al-Magdub al-Beqa'i.

There are five copies of al-Bistami's works in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, but none with the title of the present work. However, two of the works are also treatises on the magical properties of letters and numbers. See A. Arberry, A Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts, volume V, Dublin 1962, pp. 66-67, no. 4212; also see Brockelmann, GAL, II, 232, Suppl. II, 324.

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Abd-al-Rahman bin Muhammad bin 'Ali bin Ahmad al-Bistami al-Hanafi (d. 1454), Kitab al-Khafiyah fi kashf asrar 'ulum al-huruf al-wafiyah, a treatise on the science of letters, magic and talismans Ottoman, probably the Levant, second half of the 16th Century

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