Copied less than four decades after the author's death

Baha' al-Din Muhammad ibn Husayn al-Amili. Kashkul [The notebook].

€ 12,500.00

One of the most important works by Sufi polymath Baha al-Din Muhammad ibn Husayn al-Amili (1547-1621). Born in present-day Lebanon, Baha' al-Din emigrated to Safavid Persia with his family as a child, where he completed his studies in Isfahan; his achievements include co-founding the famous School of Isfahan and his status as one of the very few pre-Copernican scholars to suggest the possibility of the rotation of the spherical planet Earth in space.

This text, the "Kashkul", includes proverbs in both Persian and Arabic, scientific tracts, and collections of stories. The manuscript is split tidily into three parts, and written in a decorative scribal style, which uses the angle of sections of text to create patterns on the page (for example, lines of text angled ninety degrees to the left or right, or written horizontally, or in alternating rows and columns).

There are several conflicting dates added to the manuscript flyleaves in a mixture of English, Arabic, and Persian: one reads 1215 H (1800/01 CE), though this date was written after the manuscript was repaired, as it appears on a section of modern paper along the margin of the final leaf. The slightly damaged final leaf does not include a visible original scribal date, and the first chapter's colophon does not include a date, but the second chapter of the manuscript is dated in both text and numerals to 1065 H (1654/55 CE) at the colophon. This suggests that this is in fact a quite early copy, written only 34 years after the author's death.