Oliver White
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Lot 252•
Muhammad bin Ahmad az-Zawawi al-Hasib, better known as Abi'l-'Uqul al-Maghribi, al-Zij al-mukhtar min al-azyaj al-mufdi bi'l-'amil bihi ila awdah tariqa wa minhaj, a treatise on astronomy and astrology and containing numerous tables Ottoman, probably Arabia, mid-16th Century and later
23 April 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street£2,000 - £3,000
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Muhammad bin Ahmad az-Zawawi al-Hasib, better known as Abi'l-'Uqul al-Maghribi, al-Zij al-mukhtar min al-azyaj al-mufdi bi'l-'amil bihi ila awdah tariqa wa minhaj, a treatise on astronomy and astrology and containing numerous tables
Ottoman, probably Arabia, mid-16th Century and later
Ottoman, probably Arabia, mid-16th Century and later
Arabic manuscript on paper, 79 leaves, approximately 43 lines to the page written in naskhi script in black ink, significant words and sentences picked out in red or written in bolder script, catchwords, numerous tables, stained and crudely repaired, edges frayed, colophon states that this manuscript is entitled az-Zij al-mukhtar min al-azyaj, composed by Muhammad bin Ahmad az-Zawawi al-Hasib, better known as Abi'l 'Uqul al-Maghribi al-Yamani, and is dated AH 953/AD 1546-47, reddish-brown morocco covered with marbled paper, worn and crudely repaired, doublures of yellow paper
305 x 190 mm.
305 x 190 mm.
Footnotes
The author, known as 'Abu'l-'Uqul ('father of minds', or genius) was a Yemeni astronomer of the 13th-14th Century. He worked under the Rasulid Sultan al-Mu'ayyad Dawud ibn Yusuf (1297-1321).
The title of the work can be literally translated as 'Zij Selected from Amongst [Many] Zijes Leading to the Best Method and Way'. A fragment of this work is in the British Library (Sup. 768, 783). See B. A. Rosenfeld, E. Ihsanoglu, Mathematicians, Astonomers & Other Scholars of Islamic Civilisation and their Works (7th–19th C.), Istanbul 2003, p. 230, no. 653; see also Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl. I, 864, who records the extant fragmentary copy in the British Library.