Or 16038

This volume contains a Chagatai translation of Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Quduri’s (died 428 AH/1037 CE) al-Mukhtasar, a treatise on Islamic jurisprudence according to the Hanafi school. No other manuscript of such a translation has been traced in published catalogues. The widespread popularity of al-Quduri’s Mukhtasar is shown not only by the number of extant manuscripts but also by its having been printed at Lahore, Bombay, Istanbul, Delhi, Lucknow, and Kazan.

The manuscript is defective at the beginning. The text begins with a passage on ritual prayer, meaning that the section of ritual purity and part of the section on prayer are missing. Elsewhere, small lacunae and the text on what is now the last folio have been supplied by later hands. The text is organised by kitab and bab.

This copy dates from the 9th/early 10th century AH or 15th/early 16th century CE and is of considerable philological interest. The orthography is inconsistent and in some ways unusual, as is mentioned in a descriptive note on the back endpaper. The note is in Ottoman and was written by Kilisli Rifat Bilge and dated December [1]948. Rifat Bey considered the paper and style of writing to indicate a provenance in the region of Bukhara. He also points out the absence of any reference to a Chagatai translation in Katip Çelebi’s Kashf al-zunun; the same applies to Brockelmann.

As well as the description of the manuscript in Ottoman on the back endpaper, there is also a bayit of religious verse on f 1r. The volume is undated, but a mentioned above, is probably from the 9th or early 10th century AH/15th or early 16th century CE.