User guide to the Haddād manuscript collection

prepared by Nikolaj Serikoff: n.serikoff@wellcome.ac.uk

History of the Haddād collection

Eighty-seven manuscripts from Dr Haddād's collection were offered for sale at Sotheby's the London auctioneers in 1986 and acquired by the Wellcome Trust. The whole collection had been previously catalogued in a traditional form by Farid Sami Haddād and Hans Hinrich Biesterfeld in 1984. A short-title auction catalogue was published by Sotheby's in 1986. However, neither of these catalogues provide an adequate description of the Haddād medical manuscripts now in the Wellcome Library.

The catalogue published by Sotheby's provides only a brief description of the manuscripts and the catalogue by Haddād and Biesterfeld was written in the traditional format, since its authors deal more with the texts, par exellence rather than with the manuscripts which contain these texts. Apart from not being easily accessible in the West, since it was written in Arabic and published in Aleppo (Syria), this catalogue caters only for a limited community of historians of Islamic medicine, who read Arabic. In responding to the Wellcome Library, the Library's mission statement to contribute to the preservation of "a record of medicine past and present, to foster the understanding of medicine, its history and its impact in society", the present catalogue addresses a much wider constituency of specialists.

Until the present, the manuscripts were referred to by quoting either the old shelf-mark from Dr. Haddād's library, or the lot number from the Sotheby's catalogue. New shelf-numbers have now been assigned to each codex in the Haddād collection, by which they will be identified in future.

Recommendations to the user

Each entry is determined by the manuscript as a physical codex, not by the text. Each manuscript is cited after its shelf-mark.

Each entry is clearly divided into two parts, i.e. the 'physical description of the codex' and the description of the text, the 'textual part'. Each of these parts represents a flat data-base arranged according to a pre-defined sequence of fields.

Codicological description

Ink: in describing types of ink the general standard is followed although the colour of the ink (black or brown) is indicated, since it is dependent on the chemical structure. The standard expression (if otherwise not stated): 'headings and dividers are highlighted in red'.

Paper: distinction is made regarding to the provenance of the paper.

Water-marks: descriptions are limited to general features to avoid ambiguities, which are inevitable by verbal description.

Dimensions: this field provides dimensions of folios and written areas (in millimetres).

Lines: this word followed by a numeral indicates the number of lines to the page.

Mistara: availability of the ruling with an indication on the space between the lines (in millimetres) is systematically introduced by this word and a subsequent numeral.

Scheme: (folios) in order to standardise the description of each entry in a concise way, a simple formula is adopted which describes the number of actual folios as well as additional leaves and end leaves. Thus a scheme like 02+127+003+ means that the text-block consists of 127 folios. It is preceded by two leaves, which usually did not originally belong to it (02). It is followed by three leaves (003) which also do not belong to the text-block. All the blank folios are usually indicated following this scheme of description.

Quires: this field gives a structure of quires as well as an indication of the quire-marks. The structure of quires is represented by a formula, which contains an Arabic and a Roman numeral. Thus the first figure (Arabic) stands for the number of a quire, while the second one (Roman) for the number of folios contained in the quire, e.g.: 1i, 2vi, 3x, 4xvi means that quires one consists of one folio, quire two of six folios, quire three of ten folios and quire four of 16 folios.

Catch-words: all the catch-words and their placing are systematically mentioned (if available).

Numeration: the original numeration is given (if available). To achieve clarity numerals in Arabic script are described as Arabic as opposed to Roman, whereas Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) are described as European.

Binding: the binding material as well as types of tooling are also mentioned, and a relevant illustration is provided.

State of preservation: following states of preservation are indicated: good, mediocre, poor.

Description of hands

Script: it is commonplace in manuscript catalogues to specify a script with a vague description e.g. 'large, clear naskh', 'medium beautiful naskh' etc. It must also be borne in mind that not all scribes were professional calligraphers. For this reason, in the present catalogue, the description of the Arabic script is minimal and described in general terms (e.g. naskh) with indication to a relevant pace.

Pace: to enable a user to identify the handwriting a new parameter of pace, i.e. a sequence of repeated patterns which facilitate the description and identification of the hand and the lay out of a whole page, has been introduced. The pace can be expressed with a formula comprising resemblance (to a certain calligraphic style), number of lines to the page, (density), ratio (of alif to ba') Angle alif (inclination of alif), Angle kaf (angle of the bar of kaf).

Copyist: contains the name of the copyist (in transliteration and in Arabic).

Date of copying: contains the date when the MS was accomplished. The date is given after Hijra with an equivalent in CE.

History of manuscript

Provenance: the history of the manuscript (its known owners and sometimes readers) is given in chronological order.

Codicological miscellanea: this field contains the information which does not fall into any categories above but nevertheless is interesting and important for establishing the manuscript tradition. Usually this information is absent from published manuscript catalogues. This field contains e.g. the owners' notes cited in full and a full systematic description of seals and their legends (if readable).

Description of the text

A description of the text contains the full title in the original language (if necessary), author's name as it appears in the manuscript, invocation/s since they were considered by the Arabs as elements of bibliographical description and quotations from the text when considered necessary to describe adequately the content of the work.

In the present catalogue the meaning of the words incipit and explicit has been modified. They are used only when the work contains its actual beginning and end. If the work is incomplete or ends abruptly the words begins and ends are used instead.

Orthography and principles of citations: All the text samples are quoted in original orthography, i.e. vernacular quotations are not "edited". For the first time they are preserved in the original orthography with all the mistakes and corrections (empty radicals, wrongly put vowel signs, etc.) as found in the original copy of the text.

Colophon: in this field the author's or copyist's colophon, (or both of them) is quoted in Arabic verbatim without translation.

Summary of contents: contains a short indication on the contents of a work.

Detailed contents: each description is supplied with a detailed list of chapters, which enables a researcher immediately to gain a clear idea about the textual version of an Arabic work.

Literature: the list of references has been shortened. It now only includes references either to standard works where a researcher can obtain general information about the text contained in a codex or to specific publications where this particular codex is referred to.

Haddād and H.H. Biesterfeld = F.S. Haddād, H.H. Biesterfeld Fihrist al-Makhtutatat-at-tibbiyya al-`arabiyya fi Maktabat ad-Duktur Sami Ibrahim Haddād (Aleppo 1984)

Ullmann (Medizin) = M. Ullmann Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden 1970)

Dietrich (Medicinalia) = A. Dietrich Medicinalia Arabica. Studien über arabische medizinische Handschriften in türkischen und syrischen Bibliotheken (Göttingen 1966)

GAL = C. Brockelmann Geschichte der arabischen Literatur I - II (Leiden 1943 - 1949)

GAL SB = GAL Supplementbände I- III (Leiden 1937 - 1942)