Literary text: NLI 577.2/8

Description

The first folio of the astronomical/astrological treatise Kitāb al-Qirānāt (The Book of Conjunctions) by Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Faḍl b. Ḥātim al-Nayrīzī (fl. 9th/10th CE). The prologue states that he composed it at the behest of the Abbasid caliph al-Muktafī (r. 902–08), the son of al-Muʿtaḍid. It also seems to refer to the Kharijites in the Maghrib (al-khawārij bi-l-maghrib), but the surrounding text is quite damaged. The period of this copy is likely late 12th or early 13th century; see the FGP join finder for additional fragments in the hand of the same scribe. Interestingly the name of the treatise's author is mistranscribed from the undotted Arabic original as al-Tayrīzī (see T-S 8J34.4 (PGPID 7720) for the same kind of error, and in fact the same scribe may have written both NLI 577.2/8 and T-S 8J34.4, with the differences attributable to the difference between a book hand and a documentary hand). This work is not mentioned among al-Nayrīzī's known works (unless it had a different name), and this manuscript may be an unicum. ASE