English: BURHAN AL-DIN NAFIS BIN 'AWAD AL-KIRMANI, KNOWN AS AL-NAFISI (D. AH 853/1449-50 AD): SHARH MUJIZ AL-QANUN FI AL-TIBB LI-IBN SINA

COPIED BY MUHAMMAD BIN MUHAMMAD BIN FAKHR AL-DIN AL-MUHYABADI, IRAN, DATED AH 876/1471-72 AD

A commentary on Qanun al-Tibb, the famed medial encyclopaedia by Ibn Sina, Arabic manuscript on paper, 392ff. plus one fly-leaf, each folio with 25ll. of tiny black naskh, important words and phrases picked out in red, catchwords, occasional marginal notes, first fly-leaf and doublure with copious later owner's notes, some water-staining to margins, part loose in plain brown morocco, tan doublures Folio 10 x 7in. (25.4 x 17.8cm.)

The Sharh Mujiz al-Qanun fi al-Tibb li-Ibn Sina is a commentary on an abridgement, by 'Ala al-Din Abu'l Hassan 'Ali bin Abi'l-Haram bin al-Nafis al-Qurashi (d. AH 687/1288-89), of Ibn Sina's Qanun fi'l-Tibb. The author, al-Nafisi, was a court physician to the Timurid ruler Ulug Beg (1394-1449) and the preface to this manuscript bears a dedication to him. The commentary was completed in Samarkand in AH 841/1437-38 AD. Written only 35 years after the text's completion, and 20 years after the death of the author, this manuscript is a very early, and thus significant, copy of the work.

For a copy which is complete except for the introduction and dated 17 February 1496 see Emilie Savage-Smith, A New Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Oxford 2011, pp.299-306, no.67. Two other copies of the work (one not dated, the other dated AH 905/1499-1500 AD) are in the Army Medical Library, United States (D. Schullian and F. Sommer, A Catalogue of Incunabula and Manuscripts in the Army Medical Library, New York, pp.311-12, nos. A43 and 44). Three others (dated 26 December 1736, 15th century and March-April 1501) are in the Chester Beatty Library (see A. Arberry, A Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts, Vol.I, V and VII, Dublin, 1955, 1962 and 1964, nos.3119, 4054 and 5066). Another is in the Haddad Collection. That is datable to the 18th century (N. Serikoff, Arabic Medical Manuscripts of the Wellcome Library, Leiden, 2005, pp.471-72, no.480).