FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ, Muhammad ibn Yaʻqūb

FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ, Muhammad ibn Yaʻqūb

£37,500.00
£37,500.00
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  • FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ, Muhammad ibn Yaʻqūb
  • FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ, Muhammad ibn Yaʻqūb
FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ, Muhammad ibn Yaʻqūb

FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ, Muhammad ibn Yaʻqūb

FINELY ILLUMINATED, HANDSOME BINDING

FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ, Muhammad ibn Yaʻqūb. Al-Q_m_s al-muhit
£37,500.00
£37,500.00

Central Asia, Manuscript on paper, 1061AH / 1650AD..

Tall 8vo, 260 x 140mm. Manuscript on thick, high-quality cream-coloured paper, ff. [417]. Traces of mistara, black, red, blue, orange, and green ink, naskh with occasional nasta liq features, all pages gilt ruled, numerous sidenotes in black, red or purple ink, catchwords, 37 lines per full page. First page of text and first page of the chapter for the letter sh_n finely illuminated to a panel design, ruled in red and black, upper panel with blue palmettes, and dome with pink and light blue fleurons and tendrils within gilt half lozenges over a blue background, border ruled in pink and gold, panel below with gilt cartouche, half-lozenges and fleurons over a blue background; over 20 chapter headings and occasional marginal decoration to highlight verse with gilt lozenges or half lozenges decorated with pink fleurons, over a blue background, sometimes within red border; round verse dividers sometimes in gold. Last gathering a bit browned, the odd minor marginal repair (apparently before writing), light ink splash to one leaf. A beautifully-preserved copy in (most probably Turkish) r_m_-patterned yek_ah binding, crimson goatskin with olive green inlays c1800, flat spine (rebacked), gilt-ruled to a panel design, outer border with gilt ropework, second border with interlacing gilt tendrils over gilt-ruled green goatskin inlay, central panel within gilt ropework, gilt interlacing tendrils and dots over green goatskin inlay, central rectangular medallion with sliced edges, small lozenge at head and foot with gilt interlacing tendrils over green goatskin inlay, fore-edge flap with gilt interlacing tendrils over green goatskin inlay within gilt ropework, and cornerpieces and small lozenge as above, flap hinges very discreetly repaired, green endpapers speckled in black (countermark: GFL), double gilt ruled. All edges decorated with ms tendrils in gold and blue ink, now a bit faded.

A beautifully-preserved, finely decorated ms copy of Fīrūzābādī’s ground-breaking dictionary of the Arabic language. Muhammad ibn Yaʻqūb Fīrūzābādī (1329-1414) was a Persian Muslim polymath, and a major linguist. He trained in Islamic law, grammar, and the Qur’an, and travelled widely from Shiraz to Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Mecca, India, and Yemen. Meaning ‘The Surrounding Ocean’, ‘al-Qamus al-muhit’ was based on hundreds of sources, e.g., Ibn Sida’s ‘al-Mukham’ (458AH / 1065AD). Unlike today’s dictionaries, it was organized in ‘rhyme arrangement’, ordering words ‘first according to their final radical, […] then according to their first and intermediate radicals’ (Dictionnaires, p.2441). Through ‘brevity combined with copiousness and clarity, clear indication of vowelling, and the use of abbreviations’ (Haywood, p.88) – all much favoured by students – Fīrūzābādī managed to reach 60,000 entries whilst retaining compactness through a focus on lemmas only, without the traditional illustrative examples from the hadith or the Qur’an. ‘Qamus’ inspired numerous European dictionary of Arabic, including Lane’s ‘Lexicon’, still in use today, and his abbreviation ‘j’ for ‘jam’a’ (plural) is also still current. The marginal notes include references to important medieval grammarians such as Iraqi Ibn Duraīd.

Dated 1650 in the colophon, the ms was copied by ‘Abd Allah bin Hussein ‘Abd al-Rahman on high-quality paper, with very spacious chainlines (here approx. 45mm), frequent in the C17-C18 and probably produced in India (Déroche, p.55). The browning on the first recto and last verso suggests an original binding with leather doublures (see Scheper, p.39), later substituted by the present, very handsome Turkish rūmī-patterned yekşah binding c1800. The GFL countermark on the endpapers is also found on paper with three crescents – a watermark traditionally intended for the Middle Eastern market – on a ms dated 1800-60 (Nat. Lib. Portugal MS F.C.R. 231). The decorated fore-edges, here finely executed in gold, are infrequent in Islamic mss; Scheper only found six examples in the Leiden UL collections (Scheper, p.261). A very fine ms awaiting further study.

Provenance: Dr Ludwig Strecker – Kat. des Gutenberg-Mus., Mainz, 1959, n.3.

F. _eyma Boydak, ‘A Decoration Technique Featured in 18th Century Turkish Bindings’, Cumhuriyet Theology Journal, 26 (2022), 743-62; F. Déroche, Islamic Codicology (2005); K. Scheper, The Technique of Islamic Bookbindings (2014); J.A. Haywood, Arabic Lexicography (1960); Dictionnaires, vol.III (1991).
L4757

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