Arabic mathematics, grammar, rhetoric

'Amili, Baha’ al-Din Muhammad ibn Husayn al- / Mawlanazada Uthman al-Khita’i. Khulasat al-hisab [The Summa of Arithmetic, and] Hashiyat 'ala Mukhtasar al-ma’ani.

€ 6,500.00

A manuscript in two parts, the first a mathematical treatise by the famous Imami scholar Sheikh Baha'i, the second on Arabic grammar.

The first text, featuring two pages of geometrical figures in the margins, is the Summa of Arithmetic (Khulasat al-hisab), whose author's full name is Baha’ al-Din Muhammad b. Husayn al-'Amili (1547-1621 CE). From a political family in the Safavid empire, Baha'i moved widely throughout his youth, travelled through Ottoman provinces to Egypt, Jerusalem, and Mecca, corresponded with his father who retired to Bahrain after his own Hajj, and was widely known in both Ottoman and Safavid circles. He was a polymath who wrote widely on numerous subjects, not only mathematics but also on astronomy, poetry, and theology.

Evidently, the scribe or commissioner of this manuscript had similar multifaceted interests: following Baha'i's mathematical treatise is a commentary on a work on Arabic rhetoric and grammar. This is titled "Hashiyat 'ala Mukhtasar al-ma’ani", by the author Mawlanazada Uthman al-Khita’i (d. between 1481 and 1488/89 CE), containing glosses on al-Taftazani's extracts from al-Mutauwal. Several other copies of this work are known in institutions (for example, at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Petermann I 362).