Home / All / For Sale to the Highest Bidder: A Precious Shiʿi Manuscript from the Early Eleventh Century

For Sale to the Highest Bidder: A Precious Shiʿi Manuscript from the Early Eleventh Century

A remarkable manuscript containing volume 2 of the work (henceforth “Lot 68”) is currently offered for sale by the UK auctioneer Dreweatts.

The prominent Twelver Shiʿi scholar and poet, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn “al-Sharīf al-Raḍī” (d. 406 /1015), author of a monumental, partly preserved Qurʾān commentary in ten volumes, Ḥaqāʾiq al-taʾwīl fī mutashābih al-tanzīl, and compiler of the renowned anthology of homilies, speeches and letters at-tributed to Imām ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), Nahj al-balāgha, also composed a comprehensive, and largely unprecedented book on the metaphors in the Qurʾān, entitled Talkhīṣ al-bayān ʿan majāzāt al-Qurʾā n. A remarkable manuscript containing volume 2 of the work (henceforth “Lot 68”) is currently offered for sale by the UK auctioneer Dreweatts. The description in the Dreweatts web-based catalogue2 reads as follows:

162 leaves (plus one contemporary and 3 later endleaves), complete in alternating quires of 8 and 12 leaves with a bifolium at the end to complete the text, the second volume of the text only, single column of 11-12 lines in sepia naskh hand of the author al-Sharif al-Radi himself, title on recto of first leaf, colophon at end of text in same hand, …

The auctioneer’s conclusion that the codex constitutes an autograph is compelling. The volume ends with an authorial colophon (fig. 6) in which al-Sharīfal-Raḍī relates the dates of the commencement of the composition (Thursday, 20 Shaʿbān 401[/29 March 1011]) and its completion (Sunday, 13 Shawwāl 401[/17 May 1011]). That the codex has both a title page and a final colophon confirms its completeness. At the same time, since the auctioneer’s website includes only a few sample pages, it cannot be established precisely where in the work volume 2 begins.

Confirmation that the codex dates back to the late tenth or first half of the eleventh century CE—but not that it is a holograph—is also provided by a C14 test (by CIRAM Science for Art Cultural Heritage of Martillac, France and New York, their report reference 0415-OA-98R-4 carried out in 2015, with them extracting the sample of paper from the book them-selves: strip of paper from blank lower edge of fol. 10), as well as a report on the antiquity of the paper […] The C14 analysis establishes a date of 986-1048 AD with a probability of 79.1%, and the paper stock is characteristically Persian and of the twelfth century or before (the extreme rarity of comparative eleventh-century manuscripts from this region forcing the dating parameters to be set as twelfth-century or before).

Additional confirmation that the codex constitutes a holograph is provided on the titlepage (fig. 1), which was written down by one al-Ḥasan b. Ḥāmid al-Warrāq, the equivalent of a publisher’s impressum. He remarks that the work is in the hand of the author. Moreover, the titlepage also contains a 192SchmidtkeShii Studies Review 4 (2020) 190-199statement by the renowned grammarian and adīb Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā b. al-Faraj b. Ṣāliḥ al-Rabaʿī al-Zuhayrī al-Naḥwī (b. 328/939, d. 420/1029), obviously an admirer of al-Sharīf al-Raḍī.

Continue reading

Bibliographic Information

Title: For Sale to the Highest Bidder: A Precious Shiʿi Manuscript from the Early Eleventh Century

Author: Sabine Schmidtke

Published in: Shii Studies Review 4 (2020)

 Language: English

Length: 9 pages

About Ali Teymoori

Check Also

The Terms of the Peace Treaty of Imam Hassan (as)

Before starting a discussion on the peace treaty, it is considered necessary to state that the historians have very boldly tried to keep the world in the dark about the clauses and the...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Google Analytics Alternative