Maqālah fī al-ʻamal bi-al-yad.
مقالة في العمل باليد.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Author/Creator:

Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʻAbbās al-Zahrāwī, -1013?, author.

Contributor:

Schoenberg, Lawrence J., former owner.

Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

Arabic

Subjects (All):

Surgical instruments and apparatus.

Surgery--Early works to 1800.

Surgery.

Surgical instruments and apparatus--Early works to 1800.

Medicine, Arab.

Genre:

Manuscripts, Arabic.

Manuscripts, 15th century.

Manuscripts, Renaissance.

codices (bound manuscripts)

treatises

drawings (visual works)

annotations

Early works.

Penn Provenance:

Sold at auction at Sotheby's, 2 Apr. 2002, lot 23, to Lawrence J. Schoenberg.

Deposit by Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle, 2011.

Gift of Barbara Brizdle Schoenberg, 2016.

Physical Description:

108 leaves : paper, illustrations ; 177 x 125 (135 x 90) mm bound to 177 x 140 mm

Place of Publication:

A.H. 869 (1464)

Language Note:

Arabic.

Summary:

Portions of a treatise on surgery. Parts of the second chapter and all of the third chapter of the 3-chapter treatise, which is the last of the 30 treatises in the Taṣrīf li-man ʻajiza ʻan al-taʼlīf, a larger work by al-Zahrāwī. Topics in the manuscript include incision, perforation, blood-letting, wounds, bone-setting, dislocations, and sprains. Contemporary corrections in margins; additional notes in a maghribi script also in margins.

Notes:

Ms. codex.

Title from colophon (f. 107v).

Collation: Paper, 108; 1¹² 2⁸ 3¹² 4⁴ 5⁸ 6¹² 7⁸ 8¹² 9⁸ 10-11¹²; [1-85, i, 86-107]; modern foliation in pencil, upper center recto. Catchword on each leaf, lower left verso.

Layout: Written in 19 long lines.

Script: Written in naskh script in black ink in two hands; partially pointed, further points added by a later hand.

Decoration: Numerous illustrations of surgical instruments in black or black and red ink; rubrications in red.

Binding: Bound in light brown leather over pasteboard with flap (Type II); blind stamped central mandorla, border and foliate frame; plain paper doublure.

Origin: Copy completed in A.H. 869 (1464).

Local Notes:

Lawrence J. Schoenberg & Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative.

Cited in:

Described in Transformation of knowledge: early manuscripts from the collection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg (London: Paul Holberton, 2006), p. 87-88 (LJS 435).

Publications about:

Käs, Fabian, "Medical instruments" in Sonja Brentjes, ed., Routledge handbook on the sciences in Islamicate societies: practices from the 2nd/8th to the 13th/19th centuries (New York: Routledge, 2022), p. 505 (fig. IV.4.2).

Bos, Gerrit and Fabian Käs, "Al-Zahrāwī and his medical handbook," in Antonio Vallejo Triano and Eduardo Manzano Moreno, eds., Madinat Al-Zahra: the radiant capital of Islamic Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025), pp. 183 (figs. 14-1 and 14-2) and 186.

Cited as:

Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʻAbbās al-Zahrāwī, Maqālah fī al-ʻamal bi-al-yad (LJS 435). Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

OCLC:

785430346

Online:

The Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative Fund Home Page