From the library of the Jesuit priest Simon Khudayr

Firuzabadi, Abu'l Tahir Muhammad bin Yaqub al-. Al-qamus al-muhit.

€ 28.000,00

Important, early manuscript of Al-Qamus by Firuzabadi, a Persian-born lexicographer who was long resident in Baghdad, Damascus and Jerusalem before settling in Mecca. His famous dictionary, completed in 1410 CE, contains about 60,000 entries, including several of Yemenite origin. It served as the basis of many later European dictionaries of Arabic. The work, of which manuscripts are found in most important libraries, is itself a reduction of the author's monumental lost dictionary "Al-Lami' al-mu'allam", which was said to have comprised 60 or even 100 volumes.

This particular example, dated 975 AH and signed by the scribe Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Baha-i d-din al Ansari, is of special interest not only for its uncommon age, but also for having been owned and studied by the Jesuit priest Simon Khudayr, a known Oriental scholar at the Maronite College in Rome, which functioned as a highly important gateway in facilitating Western academic access to oriental languages.

Provenance: 18th century inscription of the Jesuit priest Siman Khudayr (Simone Verdi) and scholar in Oriental studies at the Maronite College in Rome, with his signature at the beginning of vol. 2 and his full-page description of the work in Latin at the beginning of vol. 1. Bookplates of Albert May Todd (1850-1931), "The Peppermint King of Kalamazoo", political activist, and book collector. Later sold by the bookseller John E. Scopes of Albany, NY, to the American architect and watercolourist Leslie Seward Van Campen (1913-2005) of Ballston Lake, NY (his drystamp to flyleaf). Splendidly bound for him in crushed blue half morocco by Marian U. M. Lane of Washington, D.C., British-born illuminator of books as well as an accomplished bookbinder and designer who studied her craft at Sangorski & Sutcliffe.