Alchemical manuscript with a unique textual tradition

Simawi, Abu al-Qasim Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Iraqi al-. Shifaa al-sudur fi sharh diwan al-shudhur [Commentary on Shudhur al-dhahab, the "Splinters of Gold"].

€ 45,000.00

A commentary on the celebrated didactic alchemical poem "Shudhur al-Dhahab", representing one of the earliest and most influential expositions of the diwan by the 12th century Andalusian alchemist Ibn Arfa’ Ra's, here bearing a distinctive and otherwise unattested title.

Recent scholarship has located ten manuscript witnesses of al-Simawi’s commentary, and several additional copies are reported in early institutional catalogues; of these, only six are complete and dated, all their titles forming variations on "Sharh Diwan al-Shudhur". The present manuscript is both complete and textually coherent, and transmits the work under the unique title "Shifaa al-Sudur fi Sharh Diwan al-Shudhur", a designation not recorded in other known copies.

The opening planetary poem, al-Kawkabiyya, which is structured around the conjunctions of Mars and Venus, the Sun and Moon, Jupiter and Mercury, was read as an allegory of metallic generation and alchemical transformation, and it elicited sustained exegetical interest. The commentary tradition translates this cosmological symbolism into technical doctrine throughout the text, reflecting the close relationship between poetic instruction and scientific practice. The signed and dated colophon of the present manuscript documents an 18th century Egyptian reception of this earlier authority.

The manuscript bears several ownership notes, including that of Gabriel al-Dallal al-Halabi, dated 1807; Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Attar (1766-1835), Shaykh al-Azhar in Cairo; Khayr al-Din ibn Said al-Ilmi; and a partly illegible red stamp dated 1918 CE reading "Ahmad ibn al Sayyid" (?). It also entered the al-Hegaziya library of Fouad Salim al-Hegazi, an early 20th century Egyptian politician and diplomat. Several inks numbers and calculations in the margins appear to be of numerological interest.