Abstract: This portolan map by the Dutch engraver, publisher, and map seller Frederick de Wit (1629 or 1630-1706) shows the Indian Ocean from the Cape of Good Hope to the west coast of India (Malabar). The map was first published in 1675 and was reprinted in 1715. It is oriented with east at the top. Kishm is placed in the present-day United Arab Emirates (UAE) and repeated as “Quaro” and “Quiximi.” The shape of the Arabian or Persian Gulf differs from that shown on other maps. There is a big island north of Bahrain Island named “Quezimi,” most likely another version of Qishm. Khorfan is shown twice: at one location in the present-day UAE in the Gulf of Corsca and the second on the Omani side, where it is called “Orfacan.” Mascalat, the region, is located at the center of the Arabian Peninsula, while the town of the same name is found south of Tablan, not far from the Arabian coast. “Ormuz,” a territorial name, is found around Oman and the present-day UAE. The Arabian Gulf is called “Mare Elcatif ol Sinus Persicus” (Al Qatif, Persian Gulf), while the Red Sea is marked “Mare Rubrum turcis Mare de Mecca olim Sinus Arabicus” (Red Sea, named Sea of Mecca by Turks and formerly known as the Arabian Gulf).Physical description: 1 map; color; 42 x 53.5 centimeters
Abstract: Johannes Huswirth (Sanensis) was a German arithmetician who flourished around 1500. Nothing is known of his life. That he is sometimes referred to as Sanensis suggests that he may have come from Sayn, Germany. Arithmetice Lilium Triplicis Practice (The threefold lily of practical arithmetic) presents basic arithmetic operations such as addition and multiplication for whole numbers and fractions. It treats much of the same material that Huswirth had covered in an earlier work, Enchirdion Algorismi (Handbook of algorithms). The work includes two woodcut illustrations; one of God the Father and Jesus Christ surrounded by angels, in the style of Lucas Cranach (1472–1553), the other of the coat of arms of Cologne framed by the figures of a lion and a griffin. The volume was published in Cologne in 1511 by the shop of Cornelis of Zyrickzee.Physical description: 19 pages : illustrations ; 20 centimeters
Abstract: Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā (980–1037), commonly known as Avicenna, was born at Afshaneh, near Bukhara in Persia (present-day Uzbekistan). By the age of 10, he was well versed in the study of the Qurʼan and various sciences. He was the most famous and influential of the many Islamic scholars, scientists, and philosophers of the medieval world. He was foremost a physician but was also an astronomer, chemist, geologist, psychologist, philosopher, logician, mathematician, physicist, and poet. A prolific writer in all of these fields, he captured the knowledge of the time in well organized texts. Avicenna’s writings influenced the scholarship of medicine in the West into the 17th century. Avicenna’s al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (The canon of medicine) contains a complete system of medicine based on the traditions of the ancient Greek scholars. Floris Avicenne is a Latin translation of Avicenna’s masterpiece, first published in 1508 by the Renaissance editor of scientific translations Michael de Capella.Physical description: 346 pages, 17 centimeters
Binding: European binding (repaired) of pasteboards covered with mottled brown leather. The covers have a central frame of four fillets with scallops interspersed with palmettes; at each corner of the central frame are large blind-stamped flower-heads. The covers also have narrow outer frames of two fillets. The spine (five cords) is undecorated. The pastedowns and endpapers (fols. ii–ii, iii–iv) are modern. The numeral 91 has been inked on the fore-edge of the manuscript.Contents note: Ff. 10a-12a are incomplete; f. 12b is blank; some of the tables ff. 48a-49a are incomplete; f.50a has been added by a later hand. Ff. 4b-5a, 12b and 93b-94a contain pencilled notes in several languages by John Greaves (1602-1652), Savilian Professor of Astronomy (1643-8).Dimensions: 26.4 × 18.0 (17.2 × 11.0) cm; the pages have been trimmed.Hand: Main text in Arabic naskh; notes in several other Arabic and Persian hands in addition to three European hands: Greaves, Bernard and unidentified.Layout: 21 lines per page, blank ink with red rubrics; from f. 50a, the text is enclosed in red-inked frames. Tables are laid out in grids using red and black ink.Record origin: "Description abbreviated from Emilie Savage-SmithRecord origin: A descriptive Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts at St John's CollegeRecord origin: Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University PressRecord origin: 2005)Record origin: Entry No. 6Record origin: pp. 26-30."
Abstract: This 1662 Latin map of Arabia is a copy of an earlier map by Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), the founder of the Blaeu cartographic firm. It is one of the first maps to show internal features of the Arabian Peninsula. Mountains are depicted, oases denoted by trees, and points used to indicate pearl deposits in the Arabian Gulf. The map uses dotted lines to show international borders. The Red Sea is denoted by three Latin names: Mare Rubrum (Red Sea), Mare Mecca (Sea of Mecca), and Sinus Arabicus (Gulf of Arabia). The Blaeu firm published the first edition of the Atlas Novus (New atlas) in 1635. Sons Joan (1596-1673) and Cornelis (died 1648) took over the firm after their father’s death and continued to produce expanded and improved editions of the atlas.Physical description: 1 map; color; 40 x 51 centimeters
Abstract: This 1616 map is a reprint of a map originally published in 1598 by Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612), a Flemish cartographer and engraver who settled in Amsterdam in about 1593 and established a business that produced globes and the first large maps of the world. The map covers the territory from west of the Gulf of Suez to the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, and from the mouth of the Euphrates River to Aden. The only cities indicated on the western coast of the Persian or Arabian Gulf are Qatar (“Catara”), “Godo,” and “Catiffa.” The map shows sandbanks around the coast and rivers at Medina and Mecca. Few towns and regions are shown, and there is a range of mountains in the center of the peninsula. Al Qatif is repeated as the town “Catiffa” and the region “Elcatif.” The peninsula opposite Bahrain Island, shown unnamed, is marked as where “Catara” is found. The commonly noted rivers of the Arabian coast are shown as very close together. The Arabian Gulf is called “Persicus Sinus” (Persian Gulf) and there is no name given for the Red Sea. The Ayaman area is shown as the most populated area on the map. The cartographer uses castles to denote cities and dotted lines to show the division of the Arabian Peninsula into three parts.Physical description: 1 map; black and white; 11.60 x 8.50 centimeters
Abstract: This map of 1616, with Latin place names, is a reprint of a work by Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612), a Flemish cartographer and engraver who settled in Amsterdam in about 1593 and established a business that produced globes and the first large maps of the world. The place names on the map are unclear. “Coromanis” is shown on many older maps as located in present-day Kuwait, but here is shown as lying beyond “Catiffa,” or Al Qatif. “Luna,” on the coastal belt of the Arabian Gulf, could be Ras Tanurah, located near “Carmonis.” (Some historians believe that “Carmon” or “Carmonis” is derived from the Arabic name, Khor Omani, which various maps show at different points on the coast of the Arabian Gulf.) This place also could be “Cor Bobian,” or the Arabic Khor Bobian. A town with the strange name of “Baba” is shown adjacent to a river placed on the territory of the present-day United Arab Emirates. Beyond Julfar is “Cassape,” a name that is not understood by modern scholars. Qatar and Bahrain are ambiguously represented on this map, and difficult to identify.Physical description: 1 map; black and white; 8.50 x 12.10 centimeters
Abstract: This volume contains a Latin commentary on the first part of Avicenna’s Al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (The canon of medicine) by the Italian physician and philosopher Giovanni Battista da Mónte (known as Montano, 1498–1551), published in Venice in 1557. Montano was born in Verona. After first working in Brescia, he taught medicine at the University of Padua. He translated various works from Greek into Latin and wrote numerous commentaries on treatises by Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, most of which were published posthumously by his followers. He is considered to be the founder of clinical medicine in Padua, where he used to lecture at the bedside of the sick. Avicenna was the Latinized name of the Persian polymath Abū Alī al-Ḥusayn Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), whose canon was translated into Latin and remained part of the standard curriculum for medical students in Europe for centuries. Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (present-day Uzbekistan). His family moved to Balkh several years after his birth, which enabled him to receive an excellent education in this culturally and intellectually important capital city. By the time he was 18, he was thoroughly schooled in the Greek sciences. His professional life as a physician began at that time, when he was summoned to the Sāmānid court to treat Nūḥ b. Manṣūr (ruled 976–97), launching him on a career that involved the practice of medicine in different courts for the rest of his life. A prolific author, Ibn Sīnā wrote on topics as varied as metaphysics, theology, medicine, psychology, earth sciences, physics, astronomy, astrology, and chemistry. The second work in this volume, De membris capite (Chapter on the limbs), is by Giano Matteo Durastante, a physician and professor of medicine from Monte San Giusto in eastern Italy, who flourished in the second half of the 16th century.Physical description: 688 pages ; 17 centimeters
Abstract: This work is a commentary in Latin by Italian professor and physician Giovanni Arcolani (died 1484, also known as Ioannis Arculani) on the ninth book of Kitāb al-ṭibb al-Manṣūrī (The book of medicine dedicated to Mansur) by the renowned Persian polymath Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā Rāzī (circa 865–circa 925). Known in the Latin West as Rhazes or Rasis, Rāzī was born in Rayy, just south of Tehran. He is generally considered one of the towering figures in medicine in the medieval period. His influence on the development of medicine in the Islamic world and in Europe was surpassed only by that of his fellow Persian scientist, Ibn Sinā (Avicenna in the Latin West). Rāzī studied alchemy, music, and philosophy early in life, before turning to medicine. He became the head of the hospital in Rayy and subsequently held the same post in Baghdad. Rāzī’s considerable clinical experience and the care with which he made and recorded clinical observations helped make him the preeminent clinical physician in the Islamic world. As one of the most important figures in medieval alchemy, he also gave detailed descriptions of many chemical processes such as distillation, calcination, and filtration. The scientist and scholar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Bīrūnī (973–circa 1048), a collector of Rāzī’s works, listed 184 works by Rāzī, 56 of which are devoted to medicine and related subjects. Rāzī’s most important medical work is the immense encyclopaedia Kitāb al-Hāwī, which achieved great renown in the Latin West under the title Continens. In 25 volumes, the work is rich with observational and experimental information. It was translated into Latin by the Jewish physician Fara̲j̲ ibn Sālim (known as Farraguth in the Latin West) for King Charles of Anjou in 1274. It was first printed in Brescia, Italy in 1486 and repeatedly thereafter. The Kitāb al-ṭibb al-Manṣūrī is a shorter work that lists the diseases afflicting the body in order, from head to foot. This book was dedicated to Manṣūr ibn Isḥāq, the Sāmānid governor of Rayy (whence its title). It also was translated into Latin in the 13th century. The ninth part of the work, on therapeutics, was often issued on its own. This commentary was published in 1542 in Venice by the shop of Luca-Antonio Giunta (1457–1538) and has some engravings of the surgical instruments mentioned by Rāzī.Physical description: 522 pages : illustrations ; 32 centimeters
Abstract: This work is a commentary on Ibn Rushd’s prologue to his commentary on Aristotles’s Analytica Posterior (Posterior analytics) by the Italian philosopher and physician Giovanni Bernardino Longo (1528–99), published in Naples in 1551. Muhammad ibn Ahmed ibn Rushd (1126–98), known in the West by the Latinized version of his name, Averroes, was an intellectual luminary of the Islamic world. Although he wrote extensively on the religious sciences, natural sciences, medicine, and philosophy, his reputation in the West rests primarily on his commentaries on Aristotle. He belonged to an important Andalusian family, and served as a qāḍī (judge) in Seville in 1169. It was around this period in Seville that he undertook the first of his many commentaries on Aristotle, perhaps at the behest of his patron, the Almohad ruler Abū Ya‘qūb Yūsuf (ruled 1163–84), who had complained about the obscurity of the Aristotelian texts. Few of Ibn Rushd’s compositions are extant in the original Arabic. That many of his works survive instead as Greek or Latin translations is a testament to the importance of Ibn Rushd to the development of Western philosophy during the Middle Ages. Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle include short, mid-length, and long versions. He completed the short and the mid-length versions of his commentaries in the years 1169–78 before turning to his long commentaries, which are generally considered his finest work.Physical description: 49 items
cum triplici versione Latina, & scholijs Thomae Erpenii, cujus & alphabetum Arabicum praemittitur.Signatures: A-S⁴ (signatures printed in Arabic sequence)."Title and imprint within an architectural woodcut border incorporating the printer's device; printer's device at end."'Interlinear word-for-word translationwith a free marginal translation by Erpeniusfollowed by the version of Robert of Chester and Hermannus Dalmataand notes.'In Arabic and Latin.cum triplici versione Latina, & scholijs Thomae Erpenii, cujus & alphabetvm Arabicvm praemittitur.
cum interpretatione Latina & scholiis Iosephi Scaligeri et Thomæ Erpenii.Arabic title transliterated.BM 6:309 notes edited by Thomas Erpenius.Signatures: *⁴A-Q⁴ (Q4 blank, present).In Arabic and Latin.