Al-Razi's "Kitab al-tibb al-Mansuri": the first leaf of a Latin manuscript with highly original illumination

Al-Razi, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya (Rhazes). Nonus Almansoris, fol. 1. [Illuminated manuscript leaf].

€ 65,000.00

An imaginatively illuminated 14th century manuscript leaf Al-Rhazi's "Nonus Almansoris" (the famous Book IX of the "Book of Medicine dedicated to Mansur", often circulated as a separate work) in the influential Latin translation of Gerard of Cremona. On the extensions reaching around three sides of the text are perched animals, humans, and hybrid creatures, including a woman playing a dulcimer, a man shooting an arrow at a bird, and a dog barking at a violin-playing monkey.

Al-Rhazi, a native of Tehran, was a student of philosophy, logic, metaphysics, poetry, and music. He is said to have begun his medical studies at the age of 30 and soon became one of the most famous physicians of his day, as well as director of the hospital of Baghdad. Numerous books on medicine, chemistry, philosophy, and alchemy are attributed to his pen. Of the ten books of the encyclopedic "Liber Almansoris", Book IX concerns pathology, and it became a standard work on therapeutic medicine; it was translated, with commentaries, several times, and remained popular long after the medieval period, studied by such Renaissance physicians as Vesalius.

The present leaf, the first of the manuscript from which it was removed, was doubtless the most lavishly illuminated. The somewhat rounded, almost Italianate script and the rather pale brown ink suggest that it may have been written in southern France, perhaps at Montpellier, which in the 14th century was the leading centre in Europe for the study of medicine. The high quality of the illumination, however, suggests that it may have been decorated in Paris.

A lavishly illuminated leaf that embodies ninth-century Arabic learning translated into Latin in the twelfth-century Renaissance, and produced for a wealthy bibliophile in 14th century France.