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Add MS 36617
- Record Id:
- 032-002055067
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002055067
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000039.0x00006c
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100192318925.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 36617
- Title:
- Al-Zahrawi, Chirurgia d'Albucasis, in a Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona; Arabic-Latin glossary of medical terms
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains an illustrated Latin translation of the Chirurgia d'Albucasis, a treatise on surgery by the Arabic physician and surgeon Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-'Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-Ansari (b. 936, d. 1013), commonly known as 'al-Zahrawi'.
The treatise represents the 30th and final volume of his Kitab al-Tasrif, an encyclopedia of medical practices composed around the end of the 10th century. The translation of the surgical treatise into Latin was made by Gerard of Cremona (b. c. 1114, d. 1187), and subsequently became a standard medical textbook in use throughout Europe for the next five centuries.
For a list of other surviving manuscripts of the Chirurgia in its Latin translation, see Trotter, 'Les manuscrits latins de la Chirurgia d'Albucasis' (2001).
Contents:
ff. 1r-51r: Al-Zahrawi, Chirurgia d'Albucasis, in a Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona; arranged in three parts, with a preface beginning, 'Postquam compleui uobis o filii...' (f. 1r); the text beginning, 'Et ante quidem quam rememorem...' (f. 1r), and ending with a colophon (f. 51r).
ff. 52r-63v: Arabic-Latin glossary of medical terms, organised alphabetically in three or four columns; the text beginning, 'Alhasef idest puncti rubei...'
f. 51v is blank.
Decoration:
Numerous coloured pen-and-ink drawings of surgical instruments (ff. 1r-51r).
1 large puzzle initial in red and blue (f. 1r). Small plain initials in red and blue.
Paraph marks and highlighted initials in red. Rubrics.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002055067", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 36617: Al-Zahrawi, Chirurgia d'Albucasis, in a Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona; Arabic-Latin glossary of medical terms" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002055067
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002055067
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100192318925.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-

- Languages:
- Arabic
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1300
- End Date:
- 1349
- Date Range:
- 1st half of the 14th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment.
Dimensions: 315 x 210 mm (text space: 240 x 150 mm), written in two columns (ff. 1r-51r), three columns (ff. 52r-60v, 62v-63v), and four columns (ff. 61r-62r).
Foliation: ff. 63 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 1 unfoliated parchment leaf after f. 51 + 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end); a pink silk bookmark between ff. 44 and 45.
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Modern vellum binding, tooled in gold.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Italy.
The manuscript features an inscribed colophon that references a certain 'Baldinus Armagnoni': 'Explicit liber. Hunc librum transtulit magister Girardus Cremonensis in Tolleto de Arabico in Latinum tricessima particula libri acaragui quem composuit Albuchasim. Finito libro referamus gracia Christo. Qui scripsit scribat semper cum domino uiuat. Viuat in celis Baldinus Armagnoni in nomine felix' (f. 51r).
Provenance:
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Barrois (b. 1784, d. 1855), French deputy and book collector (see Collingham, 'Joseph Barrois' (1984)); part of his collection of around 702 manuscripts purchased by Bertram Ashburnham in 1849.
Bertram Ashburnham (b. 1797, d. 1878), 4th Earl of Ashburnham: acquired with the other Barrois manuscripts in 1849, as MS 45 (see Catalogue of the Manuscripts at Ashburnham Palace, II, Collection of J. Barrois).
Bertram Ashburnham (b. 1840, d. 1913), 5th Earl of Ashburnham: sold in the Ashburnham-Barrois sale, Sotheby's, 10 June 1901, lot 5 (see inscribed note, f. [i] recto); purchased by Bernard Quaritch for the British Museum.
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of the Manuscripts at Ashburnham Place, 4 vols (London, Hodgson, 1853-61), II, no. XLV.
The Ashburnham Library: Catalogue of the Portion of the Famous Collection of Manuscripts the Property of the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Ashburnham, Known as the Barrois Collection (London: Sotheby's, 1901), p. 3.
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1900-1905 (London: British Museum, 1907), p. 160.
Charles Singer, 'The Figures of the Bristol Guy de Chauliac MS. (circa 1430), Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 10 (1917), 71-90 (p. 80).
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medical Miniatures (London: British Library in association with the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1984), pp. 28, 109.
Hugh Collingham, 'Joseph Barrois: Portrait of a Bibliophile XXVI', Book Collector, 33 (1984), 431-48.
Miri Rubin, 'The person in the form: medieval challenges to bodily 'order'', in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. by Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 100-22 (p. 110).
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1998), p. 24.
David Trotter, 'Les manuscrits latins de la Chirurgia d'Albucasis et la lexicographie du latin médiéval', Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi, 59 (2001), 181-202 (pp. 183, 184, 187, 190, 192).
David Trotter, 'Fonction des gloses dans les textes latin, occitan et francais de la Chirurgia d'Albucasis', in Textes et cultures: Réception, Modèles, Interférences, ed. by Pierre Nobel, 2 vols (Paris: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2004), II, pp. 23-46 (p. 36).
Albucasis, Traitier de cyrurgie: édition de la traduction en ancien français de la Chirurgie d'Abūʾl Qāsim Halaf Ibn ʿAbbās al-Zahrāwī du manuscrit BNF, français 1318, ed. by David Trotter (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005), pp. 214, 270.
Monica H. Green, 'Moving from Philology to Social History: The Circulation and Uses of Albucasis's Latin Surgery in the Middle Ages', in Between Text and Patient: The Medical Enterprise in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Florence Eliza Glaze and Brian Nance (Florence: SISMEL/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011), pp. 331-72 (pp. 342 n. 41, 354 n. 74, 369-70).
Simon Meecham-Jones, '"Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie": Strategies of code-switching in the Middle English translations of Chauliac's Chirurgia Magna', in Code-Switching in Early English (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011), ed. by Herbert Schendi and Laura Wright, pp. 253-80 (pp. 271-72).
David Trotter, 'Les néologismes éphémères: l’évolution de la science et des mots', Neologica, 7 (2013), 27-39 (pp. 27, 31, 33).
Jack Hartnell, 'Tools of the Puncture: Skin, Knife, Bone, Hand', in Flaying in the Pre-modern World: Practice and Representation, ed. by Larissa Tracy (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 20-50 (p. 30).
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), pp. 58-59.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Names:
- Ashburnham, Bertram, 4th Earl of Ashburnham, 1797-1878
Ashburnham, Bertram, 5th Earl of Ashburnham, 1840-1913
Barrois, Jean-Baptiste Joseph, bibliophile; Deputy for the département du Nord, 1784-1855
Gerard of Cremona, Italian translator, c. 1114-1187
Zahrāwī, Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʿAbbās, physician and surgeon, 936-1013 - Places:
- Italy
- Related Material:
-
From Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1900-1905 (London: British Museum, 1907), p. 160:
'CHYRURGIA Albucasim: the surgical treatise in three parts by Khalaf ibn Abbas Abu al Kasim, called Al Zahrawi, translated by Gerard of Creinona (d. 1187). In the Arabic it forms the thirtieth and last section of the author's medical manual called Al tacrif. Printed, Venice 1487, Basel 1541, etc. Preface beg. " Postquam compleui uobis o filii," and text " Et ante quidem quam rememorem." Colophon " Explicit liber. Hunc librum transtulit magister Girardus Cremonensis in Tolleto de Arabico in Latinum tricessima particula libri acaragui [al Zahrawi, really the author's name] quem composuit Albuchasim. Finito libro referamus gracia Christo. Qui scripsit scribat semper cum domino uiuat. Viuat in celis Baldinus Armagnoni in nomine felix." Illustrated with coloured drawings of the surgical instruments. A portion (cap. xxxvi.-xl.) of part ii., probably forming one folio of the archetype, has been misplaced by the scribe (f. 8 b), but is repeated in its proper place. At the end (f. 52), in another hand, is a glossary of Arabic medical terms, beginning " Alhasef idest puncti rubei."
Vellum; ff. 63. Early XIV. cent. Initials in red and blue. Ashburnham-Barrois MS. 45 (sale-cat. 1901, lot 5). Modern vellum binding, with gilt tooling. 12 3/4 in. x 8 1/2 in.'