Banner featuring Arabic calligraphy in dark blue ink above the words Islamic Medical Manuscripts at the National Library of Medicine written in burgundy ink.

Catalogue: Chemical Medicine

Ghāyat al-itqān fī tadbīr badan al-insān (MS A 13): (The Culmination of Perfection in the Treatment of the Human Body); غاية الاتقان فى تدبير بدن الانسان; by Ṣāliḥ ibn Naṣr Allāh al-Ḥalabī Ibn Sallūm (d. 1670/1081); صالح ابن نصر الله ابن سلوم الحلبى

Illustrations

Preliminary folio from Ṣāliḥ ibn Naṣr Allāh al-Ḥalabī Ibn Sallūm's Ghāyat al-itqān fī tadbīr badan al-insān (The Culmination of Perfection in the Treatment of the Human Body) featuring the illuminated headpiece which opens the treatise. The illuminated opening is executed in gilt with blue, light-green, white, and red opaque watercolors. The text on is written within a gilt and black border. The very glossy, pale biscuit paper has horizontal laid lines, single chain lines and watermarks. The text is written in a medium-small naskh tending toward ta‘liq script, using black ink.

MS A 13, prelim fol. [5b]

The illuminated headpiece which opens a copy of a treatise on chemical medicine titled Ghāyat al-itqān fī tadbīr badan al-insān (The Culmination of Perfection in the Treatment of the Human Body) by Ibn Sallūm (d. 1670/1081). The copy was completed on 2 Sha‘ban 1162 (= 26 October 1749) by Sam‘ī Muṣṭafá.

Folio 172a from Ṣāliḥ ibn Naṣr Allāh al-Ḥalabī Ibn Sallūm's Ghāyat al-itqān fī tadbīr badan al-insān (The Culmination of Perfection in the Treatment of the Human Body) featuring the colophon. The illuminated opening is executed in gilt with blue, light-green, white, and red opaque watercolors. The text is written within a frame formed of a single red line that in turn is set within an outer frame of a single red line. Notes have been put in the margins between the lines. The very glossy, pale biscuit paper has horizontal laid lines, single chain lines and watermarks. The text is written in a medium-small naskh tending toward ta‘liq script, using black ink.

MS A 13, fol. 172a

The colophon of a copy of a treatise on chemical medicine titled Ghāyat al-itqān fī tadbīr badan al-insān (The Culmination of Perfection in the Treatment of the Human Body) by Ibn Sallūm (d. 1670/1081). According to the colophon shown on this page, the copy was completed on 2 Sha‘ban 1162 (= 26 October 1749) by Sam‘ī Muṣṭafá. Later owners and readers have filled the margins with recipes and therapeutic procedures.

Physical Description

Arabic. 173 leaves (fols. [5]b-172a). Dimensions 30.5 x 17.3 (text area 22 x 9.8) cm; 29 lines per page. The title is taken from fol. 1a line 22; the title is also given on a later title page for the volume (prelim fol. [1a]) as: Ghāyat al-itqān fī tibb. The author's name is given as Ṣāliḥ Efendi on fol. [5b], line 18, near the beginning of text, while on the later title page (fol. [1a] it is given as Ṣāliḥ Efendi marhum (the late).

The copy is dated in the colophon (fol. 172a) 2 Sha‘ban 1162 (= 26 October 1749). The copyist is named in the colophon (fol. 172a) as Sam‘i Mustafa and on the later title page (prelim fol. [1a]) as: Sam‘ī Muṣṭafá Efendi l-Shā‘ir ('the knowledgable').

The manuscript contains Book One only (on diseases) of the version of Ghāyat al-itqān fī tadbīr badan al-insān which is in four books.

The text is written in a medium-small naskh tending toward ta‘liq script, using black ink with headings in a magenta. There are also some magenta overlinings. There are catchwords. Fols. 1-171 have been numbered in Arabic numerals using magenta ink similar to that used for the rubricated headings. The last preliminary fol. [5], which is actually the first page of text with an illuminated headpiece, has not been given a number. The volume has been recently renumbered in Western numerals, but the older foliation has been maintained..

There is an illuminated opening on fol. [5b] executed in gilt with blue, light-green, white, and red opaque watercolors. The text on prelim fol. [5b] and fol. 1a is written within a gilt and black border; on the other folios the text is written within a frame formed of a single red line that in turn is set within an outer frame of a single red line. The text area has been frame-ruled.

This is a heavily used volume with much marginalia in Arabic and Turkish in a number of hands. Some of the notes are dated, such as those on fol. 23a, dated 1204 (= 1789) and fol. 140a, dated 1187 (= 1773).

The very glossy, pale biscuit paper has horizontal laid lines, single chain lines and watermarks (a crown with a bunch of grapes and the letters GAI V [?], and other designs). It is slightly soiled through thumbing and there is some water damage.

The volume contains 192 leaves and 5 preliminary leaves. Prelim fols.[1a-5a] contain miscellaneous notes and recipes in later hands in Turkish and Arabic, and a table of contents in chart form keyed to numbered folios. Fols. 178a-184a are blank. Fols. 172b-177b and 184b-192b contain miscellaneous notes and recipes is later hands, mostly in Turkish. Between fols. 191 and 192 there is tipped in an small piece of paper cut out of another manuscript on which there was an astronomical table, on the verso of which someone has jotted more notes.

Binding

The volume is bound in dark-maroon leather over pasteboards. The covers have a gold tooled border of two fillets enclosing a row of S-stamps. The author and title are written in paint on the spine. There are yellow paper pastedowns; on the front pastedowns there are notes concerning the author.

Provenance

On prelim fol .[2]a there is the impression of an undated lozenge-shaped owner's stamp with the name Aḥmad Ṭāhir, and immediately beneath it is an ink drawing of the stamp. Some of the notes are dated, such as those on fol. 23a, dated 1204 (= 1789) and fol. 140a, dated 1187 (= 1773); an owner's stamp is on prelim fol. [2a].

The volume was purchased in 1941 by the Army Medical Library from A. S. Yahuda who acquired it in Istanbul (ELS no. 1618, med. 56).

References

Schullian/Sommer, Cat. of incun. & MSS., entry A 13, p. 301, where author's name given as Ibn Salam, Ṣāliḥ ibn Naṣr Allāh al-Ḥalabī.

Portions of the manuscript copy were translated into English with commentary by E. Savage-Smith, 'Drug therapy of eye diseases in seventeenth-century Islamic medicine: The influence of the "new chemistry" of the Paracelsians', Pharmacy in History, 1987, 29:3-28.

NLM Microfilm Reel: FILM 48-114 no. 3