Legenda

š = Šifāʾ

m = Manṭiq (= logic) of the Šifāʾ.

ṭ = Ṭabīʿiyyāt (= natural philosophy) of the Šifāʾ.

r = Riyāḍiyyāt (= mathematics) of the Šifāʾ.

i = Ilāhiyyāt (= metaphysics) of the Šifāʾ.

part = ǧuzʾ

volume = muǧallada

 

Within Manṭiq, Ṭabīʿiyyāt, and Riyāḍiyyāt, the sections (funūn) are designed by lower-case Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, etc.) written as deponents (ex. gr.: m_v = section five of Manṭiq/logic; ṭ_ii-viii = sections ii-viii of Ṭabīʿiyyāt/natural philosophy; r_{i-ii, iv} = sections i, ii, and iv of Riyāḍiyyāt/mathematics).

Within Ilāhiyyāt, Manṭiq, Ṭabīʿiyyāt, and Riyāḍiyyāt, the treatises (maqālāt) and chapters (fuṣūl) are designed respectively by upper-case Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc.) and Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) (ex. gr.: Ilāhiyyāt I.1-3 = chapters 1-3 of treatise I of Ilāhiyyāt; ṭ_i.I.1-2 = chapters 1-2 of treatise I of section i of Ṭabīʿiyyāt/natural philosophy).

Bodleian Pococke Collection

N°	Ms.	Content	Copyist	Owner(s)	Place	Dating	Serial nr. in ms.
1	?	mi-ii.II.2
2	Oxford, Pococke 124	mii.II.3-VI.1	Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan	Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn; Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad b. al-Labūdī		10-20 Ramaḍān 601H	part 2 of m part 3 follows
3	Oxford, Pococke 123	mii.VI.2-iii	Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan		Ḥalab (Aleppo)	20-30 Šawwāl 601H	part 3 of š
4	Oxford, Pococke 122	miv.I-IV	Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan	Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn		14 Ḏū l-ḥiǧǧa 601H	part 4 of m
5	?	miv.V-IX.3
6	Oxford, Pococke 121	miv.IX.4-v.II.9		[no frontispiece, usual place of ownership notes in the other mss]		28 Raǧab 602H	part 6 of m part 7 follows
7	Oxford, Pococke 120	mv.II.10- vi.I.6		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn		23 Ḏū l-ḥiǧǧa 602H	part 7 of š part 8 follows
8	?
9	?
10	Oxford, Pococke 119	mviii.II.4-ix		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn		10-20 Rabīʿ II 603H	end of m
11	?	ṭi.I-II.10
12	Oxford, Pococke 118	ṭi.II.10- IV.7 + fragment of ṭvi.II.3 (ff. 198r-200v)		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn		Raǧab 603H	part 12 of š part 13 follows [colophon ff. 195v-196r]
13	Oxford, Pococke 115	ṭi.IV.10-iii	Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan	[no frontispiece, usual place of ownership notes in the other mss]		22 Šaʿbān 603H	part 14 of š 13 corr. in marg.
14	Oxford, Pococke 116	ṭiv-vi.II.2	Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan	Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn		10-20 Ramaḍān 603H	part 4 of ṭ part 14 of š part 15 follows
15	?	ṭvi.II.3-vii
16	Oxford, Pococke 114	ṭviii.I-VI.2				9 Ḏū l-Qaʿda 603H	volume 16 of š
17	Oxford, Pococke 113	ṭviii.VII-XII.15		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn			--- [no colophon]
18	?	ṭviii.XIII-XIX
19	İstanbul, Fatih 3211	ri		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn; Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad b. al-Labūdī		3 Muḥarram 604H	part 19 of š
20	Oxford, Pococke 109	rii-iii		[no frontispiece, usual place of ownership notes in the other mss]		11-20 Muḥarram 604H	part 20 of š
21	Oxford, Pococke 112	riv.I-IV		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn; Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad b. al-Labūdī; Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Mutaṭabbib		1-10 Ṣafar 604H	part 21 of š
22	Oxford, Pococke 111	riv.V-XII		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn		1-10 Rabīʿ II 604H	volume 22 of š
23	Oxford, Pococke 117	iI-IV		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn		20-30 Rabīʿ I 604H	part 23 of š
24	Oxford, Pococke 110	iIV-VIII.6		Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn		20-30 Ǧumādā I 604H	volume 24 of š [volume] 25 follows
25	?	iVIII.7-X

Notes

 

Content - Whereas the card catalogue of the Bodleian Library regards the collection as made of 24 original mss., Y. Mahdavi takes it to consist of 25 items, since he posits one single manuscript, as item nr. 18, between ms. Oxford, Pococke 113, and ms. İstanbul, Fatih 3211.

To assess the actual number of original mss. of this collection, the extent of the gap between the last extant ms. of Natural Philosophy and the first extant item of Mathematics turns out to be crucial: according to Mahdavi, it corresponds to one single missing ms. (item nr. 18 of the overall collection), and the number of "parts" or "volumes" of the collection reported in the extant mss. corroborates his assumption (ms. Oxford, Pococke 114 is volume 16; ms. Oxford, Pococke 113 has no serial number and is presumably part or volume 17; ms. Istanbul, Fatih 3211 is part 19). However, the missing ms. could in principle correspond to two distinct codices (as it is the case with the missing items 8-9 in Logic): of the section on Zoology at stake, the first extant ms. (Oxford, Pococke 114, 128 folios) covers approximately 92 pages of the printed edition (pp. 1-92), whereas the second extant ms. (Oxford, Pococke 113, 209 folios) approximately 176 pages (pp. 93-269); since the remaining missing part of the Zoology covers about 163 pages of the printed edition (pp. 270-433), this gap could be filled either by two mss. comparable in length to Pococke 114, or by one ms. comparable in length to Pococke 113.

Nrs. 2, 19, 21: Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad b. al- Labūdī (Damascus, VII c. Hijra) is probably the same Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad b. al-Labūdī active in Damascus that obtained MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. Seld. A32 in 633H (see D. Raynaud, A Critical Edition of Ibn al-Haytham’s On the Shape of the Eclipse, p. 16)

Nr. 13: A mistake in the numbering of this volume occurred: the colophon numbered it erroneously as fourteenth, then the correct numbering was restored in the margin.

Nr. 19: On ms. Fatih 3211, see K. Hirschler, Medieval Damascus. Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic library. The Ashrafiya library Catalogue, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2016, p. 27.

Nr. 21: Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Mutaṭabbib: a Ǧalāl al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Mutaṭabbib al-Mawlawī al-Siwāsī is recorded as the owner of MS Leiden, Or. 606 in 751H (J.J. Witkam, Inventory of the Oriental Manuscripts of the Library of the University of Leiden, vol. 1, pp. 255-256).

State of the Art - The Pococke collection was brought to the scholarly attention by A. Nicoll, Bibliotecæ Bodleianæ Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium Catalogi Partis Secundæ, Vol. II, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1835, p. 582 (“Id vero praeterea notandum est, ad unum idemque exemplar pertinere codd. Poc. 109—124”).

It was first systematically analyzed by Y. Mahdavī, Fihrist-i nusḫahā-yi muṣannafāt-i Ibn-i Sīnā, Intišārāt-i Dānišgāh-yi Tihrān, Tehran 1333Hš/1954, p. 170, who pointed out its importance as first known complete copy of the Šifāʾ. Mahdavi also suggested that ms. Fatih 3211 was part of it (Mahdavi presents this manuscript as containing the Mathematics, without any further specification, but places it correctly at the beginning of the mathematical part as item nr. 19). Mahdavi's account of the issue remains fundamental: see, for instance, Ibn Sīnā, Al-Šifāʾ, al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt, I: al-Samāʿ al-ṭabīʿī, ed. D. al-Yāsīn, Dār al-Manāhil, Beirut, 1966, p. 24, in which however the name of the copyist (Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan) is confounded with that of one of the owners (Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn); D. C. Reisman, "Mahdavi Supplement. Šifāʾ Manuscripts", Handout of the communication "Scraps and Flotsam: The Cure in Avicenna’s Private Papers" at the International Conference “The Manuscript Tradition of Avicenna’s Kitab al-Shifa’: The Current State of Research and Future Prospects”, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, 22-24 September 2010.

On the formation of the Pococke collection, see C. Wakefield, “Arabic Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: the Seventeenth-Century Collections”, in The Arabick Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. G.A. Russell, Brill, Leiden, 1994, pp. 128-46 (pp. 134-135 and n. 124).

On the Pococke collection as unique instance of “cumulative segmented” copy of the Šifaʾ, see A. Bertolacci, "Avicenna's Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure/Healing): The Manuscripts Preserved in Turkey and Their Significance", in The Reception of the Classical Arabic Philosophy in the Ottoman Empire. Proceedings of the Workshop of the International Associated Laboratory "Philosophie dans l'aire ottomane", Istanbul, 2-4 November 2015, ed. J. Jabbour, Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph, 67, 2017-2018, pp. 265-304, pp. 281-2.

On the division into parts as a codicological feature of Arabic manuscripts of special importance, see G. Humbert, "Le ǧuzʾ dans les manuscrits arabes médiévaux", in Scribes et manuscrits du Moyen-Orient, ed. F. Déroche, F. Richard, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris 1997, pp. 77-86.