Sloane MS 4088

This volume contains Yazıcıoğlu Ahmet Bijan's abridged translation Acayıbu'l-Mahlukat.

The author says in the preface that in the time of Alexander, the sages of the world had come together and described the wonders of the universe. In the age of Imām Shāfiᶜī, that work had been translated from Hebrew (written 'gayr dilince' but to be read as 'ibri dilince') into Arabic. By favour of the Sultan of Shaykhs, Hacı Bayram ('Sultanu'l-meşaih Kutbü'l-Muhakkakin Hacı Bayram Sultan'ın oğlu himmetinde') Ahmet Bican translated it into Ottoman Turkish for the benefit of his compatriots ignorant of the Arabic language, and gave the version the aforementioned title. This was done at the time when Sultan Gazi Mehmet Han conquered İstanbul in 857 AH (1453 CE).

In the above reference to Hacı Bayram, the author can only mean spiritual assistance, as the latter lived under Yıldırım Bayezit and died in Ankara, according to the Lugat-i Tarihiye, in 833 AH (1430 CE).

The legendary origin assigned to the work is sufficiently refuted by an examination of its contents. It turns out to be an abstract from the well-known ᶜajā’ib al-makhlūqāt of al-Qazwīnī, which by the omission of entire chapters and severe curtailing of others, has been reduced to less than a fifth of its bulk. A preliminary chapter in which the notion of wonder ('acayıp') is defined and illustrated, in the first instance, by the marvelous structure of the honeycomb (ff 3r-6v), is literally translated from the first Mukaddime of the original work.

In the body of the work, the process of contraction has been carried on more ruthlessly, and, in some instances, foreign matter has been introduced. The general arrangement, however, tallies exactly with that of the original. This will be seen from the following statement of contents: the six days of creation (f 6v); the heavenly spheres (f 7r); the moon and other planets (f 8v); the angels who dwell in heaven (f 12r); time and its divisions (in which the section on Arabic months differs from the Arabic text) (f 14v); winds (f 23r); rainbow (f 23v); water (f 24r); the ocean, with the tale of the ship sent by Alexander to explore it (f 25r); seas (f 27r); sea animals (f 31r); the globe and its divisions (f 33v); mountains and their use (f 34v); rivers (f 35v); springs (f 36v); minerals (f 37v); vegetables (f 43r); animals (f 47r); humans and their component parts (f 48r); the Jinns (f 59r); herbivorous animals (f 60r); beasts of prey (f 65v); birds (f 73r).

The text breaks off at the second page of the final section.

This manuscript was likely copied in the 17th century CE.