Details

Other Title:

Risālah al-ʻiṣmīyah
Risālah al-miṣrīyah
رسالة العصمية
رسالة المصرية

Subjects:

Nosairians.

Form/Genre:

Codices (bound manuscripts)
Stamps (Provenance)

Language:

Arabic.

Summary:

Book on Shiʻī esoteric wisdom. Relates to the Alawī Ghulāt community. Concerning doctrines and beliefs.

Notes:

Title from introduction (p. 1).
Pagination: Pagination has been added on every page, upper right corner (1-259), then on every verso, upper right corner (261-419). Some foliation in pencil has been added to the upper left rectos as well, especially at the end. References in the record are to the pagination as it appears.
Layout: 23-29 long lines; frame-ruled.
Script: Written in naskh with elements of other scripts (maghribi, ruqʻah) in black ink, with fairly consistent use of hāʼ musalsalah; pointed, unvocalized. Copied in at least two hands.
Decoration: Headers and guidewords are written larger, in a script similar to thuluth. Some chapter headings enclosed in decorative rectangles (p. [184], 329, for example). Other decorative florets appear around poetry and near chapter divisions. Between pages 208 and 215, there are rubrications in red.
Binding: Bound in reddish leather with flap on the right side as the book opens (Type II). Covers are blind stamped with sets of double lines forming a double frame with two sets crossing diagonally in the middle; the back cover has blind stamped florets in the spaces created among the crossing double lines. The flap also has blind stamped florets inside the double line frame. Covers are pulling away from the book at the hinges.
Origin: Copy was completed on 20 Shawwal 1268 (August 7, 1852) by Sulaymān ibn al-Shaykh Yūsuf ibn al-Shaykh Sulaymān (p. [418]).
Watermarks: Most leaves marked with Tre lune with a single initial, either B or G; a few leaves have a name in block letters.
Copy of a poem and vocabulary sheet laid in. Calligraphic design in black ink and colored sketch of a tree in orange and yellow drawn into the back inside cover. Sketches of swords on back flyleaf.
Letter dated 13 December 1907 from Dr. S.A. Sterrett Metheny to Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr. was laid into the manuscript. Metheny indicates that the manuscript had been bought about twenty years earlier by Rev. Henry Easson, a Presbyterian missionary, from a Turkish soldier who said he had captured it in the house of a sheikh during a punitive expedition to the Ansyri mountains east of Latakia. This letter has been added to the Library's Miscellaneous Manuscripts collection and filed under Metheny, S. A photocopy of the letter is on file along with the notes on this manuscript.
Seal of Solomon written out (p. 329) and also a stamp with the name Sulaymā̄n appear in several places throughout (p. 1, 156, 329, for example).

Penn Provenance:

Formerly owned by Rev. Henry Easson (note in pencil inside front cover and letter that was laid in).
Sold by Mrs. M.J. Easson through Dr. S.A. Sterrett Metheny to Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr. (note in pencil inside front cover and letter that was laid in).
Gift of Joseph G. Rosengarten, 1907 (note in pencil on Flyleaf 2r, front of book).

Cited as:

UPenn Oversize Ms. Codex 43.

Contributor:

Sulaymān ibn Yūsuf ibn Sulaymān, scribe.
Easson, Henry, Reverend, former owner.
Jastrow, Morris, Jr., 1861-1921, former owner.
Rosengarten, J. G. (Joseph George), 1835-1921, donor, former owner.
سليمان بن يوسف بن سليمان.

OCLC:

122545123