Arabic

This is the opening page (f. 2r) of MS 335, the oldest Arabic text held at New College Library. Unusually, the book is made from cotton paper, rather than the parchment used almost exclusively for Western manuscripts before the 15th century. It is a religious text, but surprisingly not an Islamic one, but one closely connected with both the Christian and Jewish faiths: it contains the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Here, the original Hebrew of these texts is translated into both Arabic and Syriac, written side by side in two columns on each page—Arabic on the left, Syriac in its own distinctive alphabet on the right. There is a long history of Syriac and Arabic appearing together in religious and liturgical texts during the medieval period, and this manuscript is witness to the appetite for Christian texts in the Levant.

The original scribe is unknown, but in the top margin of one of the final leaves (f. 348r) there is a later inscription in English dating from the 18th century which suggests quite a precise date for the creation of this manuscript.

The note by the equally unknown later reader makes reference to several different religious calendars to pinpoint the date of the manuscript, and says:

‘Written in the Year of Yonanè 1504. An Epocha to me unknown. The following Epocha is the Mahometan, & by this it appears to be finish’d in the month Jemazy the first, Anno 589. & this being 1141. of the Mahometan Era, the Age of this Book is 542 Years. A.C. 1193.’

The archaic and now obsolete term ‘Mahometan era’ (referring to Muslims as followers of the Prophet Muhammad) describes a date according to the Islamic calendar, in which the count of years begins with the Hijrah, the establishment of the first Muslim community by the Prophet Muhammad in 622 CE. According to the note, the book was made in the Hijiri or Islamic year 589, which the writer calculates correctly to have been 1193 CE. Moreover, the Hijiri date of 1141 mentioned tells us that the note itself was written in 1728/29 CE. Therefore, this beautiful book passed through many hands and has been in use for many centuries.

MS 309 dates from the 16th century, and is without doubt the most spectacular Arabic item in the collections of New College Library. This small, single volume codex would look quite unassuming if not for its striking binding of beautiful dark leather covers, blind-tooled, and decorated with gold, and with an envelope flap as a closure. The inside of the boards is just as striking, held in red leather decorated with inlaid filigree work, painted and gilded, and adhered over paper. 

The tiny volume is written on paper in both Arabic and Persian, and contains all surahs (chapters) of the Qur’an, the Islamic holy book which is believed to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. From the 11th century, Qur’ans began to be copied on paper as well as parchment.

The pages displayed above (pp. 1-2) show the first surah (Sūrat al-Fātiḥah, ‘The Opener’) and the beginning of the second (Sūrat al-Baqarah, ‘The Cow’). These pages are lavishly illuminated in blue, red, and gold. As in every Qur’an the text is fully vocalized; in this one, small markings in red above the text indicate pauses for recitation. The book contains no information at all about its creation date, artist, or patron, but the inclusion of a fāl or divination text which follows the Qur'an indicates that it was probably produced in Iran in the 16th century, under the rule of the Safavid dynasty. 

The fāl on the pages you see above (pp. 761-762) is written in Persian, and tells the reader what to do and which prayers to recite. The reader then opens a random page of the Qur’an and selects a letter; each letter corresponds to a series of predictions from which the reader then can take guidance.

As far as we know, this Qur’an came into the library sometime between 1648 and 1677.

Two languages, Arabic and Turkish, converge in this pocket-sized Ottoman prayer book which is designed to facilitate private rituals and religious devotion. Also know as Enʿām-ı şerīf, books such as these were used for personal prayer and memorisation, and were often ascribed talismanic significance. The Library acquired it in 2024 specifically to celebrate the revival of New College’s undergraduate course in Arabic, and the establishment of a new Fellowship in Arabic and its inaugural fellow Dr Christian C. Sahner.

The book reflects the diversity of early 19th-century Ottoman society: Qur’anic chapters and verses written in Arabic are accompanied by Ottoman Turkish commentaries (şerḥ), which serve to provide guidance on how to perform each prayer, and made them more easily accessible. A colophon on folio 149v names Sulaymān b. Ibrāhīm as the scribe, and dates the manuscript to 1224 AH (i.e. 1809/1810 CE).

The luxurious nature of the text can be clearly see from the image above, which shows the very beginning of the book (ff. 1v-2r), containing again the first surah of the Qur’an (Sūrat al-Fātiḥah, ‘The Opener’), and the first four verses of the second (Sūrat al-Baqarah, ‘The Cow’). The text is framed by borders of orange and red quatrefoils, with small white and gold floral motifs, all set against a dark blue background. The chapter headings, which are not part of the Qur’anic revelation, are written in gold within polylobed cartouches at the top of the frames. The main body of the text is written in black and red, and uses the Naskh style of writing, a small, round script of Islamic calligraphy which is known for its easy legibility. Verses within each chapter are separated using gold circles with black and red dots.

In the later part of the book there are descriptions of the physical and moral attributes of the Prophet Muḥammad known as the ḥilya (or hilye in Ottoman Turkish). These serve as a verbal portrait, allowing the reader to visualise and reflect on the figure of the Prophet. On this stylised page (f. 70v) the upper section introduces a devotion to the Prophet Muhammad: ‘This is the noble hilya of our master and protector Muhammad’. This is followed by descriptions and a supplication to the Prophet, though the calligraphic diagram itself may hold talismanic significance.

Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. 1286 or later), was a 13th-century Islamic jurist, theologian, and Qur’anic commentator. His Anwār al-tanzīl wa-asrār al-taʿwīl (‘The lights of revelation and the secrets of interpretation’), or simply Tafsīr al-Bayḍāwī, ‘The commentary of al-Bayḍāwī’, is considered one of the most important Qur’anic commentaries in the history of Islam. It was one of the first ever published in Europe—D. S. Margoliouth edited a selection with numerous notes, published as the Chrestomathia Baidawiana in 1894.

Medieval biographers, however, considered al-Bayḍāwī’s most important work to be his writings on Islamic law, the Minhāj al-wuṣūl ilā ʿilm al-uṣūl (‘The path that leads to knowledge of the science of jurisprudence’), an essential text for the Shāfiʿī school of jurisprudence. New College Library MS 296, pictured above, contains a sharḥ or commentary on the Minhāj by the 14th-century Ḥanafī scholar ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-ʿIbrī (d. 1342 or 1343). It was given to New College in 1635 by the London Levant merchant William Ferrars along with three other manuscripts, at a time when Arabic was still something of a mystery to most Europeans. In our Benefaction Book, and by a later librarian on the flyleaf open here, the manuscript is indeed correctly described as ‘Sharho Menhag’—but then incorrectly identified as ‘An Arabick Ms containing the Principles of the Saracenicall Divinity, and other Sciences’, which it most certainly is not.

Peter Kirstein (1577–1640) was a German doctor who taught himself Arabic in order to be able to read the works of the famous 11th-century Persian physician Avicenna. He was a pioneer for the printing of Arabic texts, greatly adding to the transmission of Arabic amongst Western scholars.

His 1608 Tria specimina characterum Arabicorum (BT3.140.2(2)) offered examples, or specimens, of Arabic literature and religious writings together with Latin translations, this was hugley influential and served as an illustration to the many people who would never have encountered written or spoken Arabic before. It contains among other pieces Kirstein’s own translation of the Fātiḥa, the important opening surah of the Qur’an. The image above shows the beginning of that text, with Latin on the left and Arabic on the right.

Our copy of the specimen is bound together with one of Kirstein’s later, larger works: his Grammatica Arabica. The Ājurrūmiyyah is the standard Arabic manual on grammar from the 13th century, which was first made accessible to Europeans when it was printed in Italy in 1592. From then on it formed the basis of a number of early treatises on Arabic grammar written by Europeans, among them this one by Kirstein, printed in 1608–1610.

It is also the source of the even more influential Grammatica arabica of the Dutch Orientalist Thomas van Erpe (1584–1624), published in 1613, the same year he was appointed Professor of Arabic at the University of Leiden (BT3.19.12(2), pictured below). This was printed from type designed by himself, and cut at his own expense, on a printing press set up at his own home in Leiden. His contemporaries considered Erpenius one of only two men ‘who should be called most expert masters of the Arabic language in Europe’. This was a watershed moment in the history of the study of Arabic in Europe, and his grammar remained the standard European work on the subject for almost two hundred years.

The same year of 1613 also saw the publication of yet another groundbreaking early printed Arabic book, the first Arabic-Latin dictionary. The Lexicon Arabico-Latinum (BT3.273.6) contains over 10,000 entries and word lists in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. It is the work of Flemish printer and publisher Franciscus Raphelengius (1539–1597), published posthumously by his sons. Four decades earlier, Raphelengius had achieved scholarly fame as principal editor of the monumental eight-volume polyglot Antwerp Bible (which we highlight in the 'Multi-Language’ tab of this online exhibition).

The dictionary is the product of a small, closely collaborating circle of early European orientalists. Raphelengius made heavy use of a Latin-Arabic glossary manuscript owned by his Arabic teacher, the French linguist Guillaume Postel (1510–1581); this had been lent to the Flemish printer Christophe Plantin (c. 1520–1589) to be used by the French Bible scholar and Orientalist Guy Lefèvre de la Boderie (1541–1598) for the Antwerp Bible. And the 68-page appendix with corrections, additions, and clarifications is the work of none other than Thomas van Erpe, the author of the Arabic grammar showcased above.

As well as bringing Arabic literature and language closer to his European contemporaries through works such as his printed specimens and Arabic grammar, Thomas van Erpe also increased the knowledge of Middle Eastern history and culture in 17th-century Europe. He was the first European to publish a partial history of the Arabian peoples. His beautifully printed, groundbreaking 1625 Historia Saracenica (BT3.139.3) includes the Arabic text and a Latin translation of excerpts from the Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 'The History of the Muslims', also known as the Kitāb al-Taʾrīḫ, ‘The Book of History’, or as al-Majmūʿ al-mubārak, ‘The Blessed Collection’. The original work was highly Influential amongst Eastern Christians, Muslim historians, and early modern Arabists, and is today preserved in over forty manuscripts.

The name of its author, the Coptic Christian historian Jirjis al-Makīn ibn al-ʿAmīd (1205–1273), is often latinised as ‘Georgius Elmacinus’—and this is how you find it on the title page of the Historia here.

Van Erpe's Historia translates only the second volume of the Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, covering the history of the Arabs from pre-Islamic times to the Seljuk Turks (570–1118). As one of the first translations of a lengthy Arabic text in early modern Europe, it suffered from a lack of readily available dictionaries, but was still a breakthrough in European knowledge of Islamic history. It was translated into English as The Saracenical Historie (and included in the wildly popular 1626 Purchas His Pilgrimage), and into French as L’Histoire mahométane (1657). 

The original Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, however, remains partly unedited to this day.

In 1723 Jean Gagnier (1670–1740) published an account of the life and deeds of Muhammad, who is styled in the title as ‘Moslemicae religionis auctoris, et Imperii Saracenici fundatoris’—‘the author of the Muslim religion and founder of the Saracen Empire’. At the time, his De vita, et rebus gestis Mohammedis (NB.110.9) offered a much fuller account of Muhammad’s biography and early Islamic history than any source previously available to Europeans.

Presented with parallel Arabic and Latin text, this book is in fact an extract from the 14th-century Short History of Humanity (Tārīkh al-mukhtaṣar fī akhbār al-bashar) by the Ayyubid prince, geographer, historian, and local governor Abū al-Fidāʼ (1273–1331), also known as ‘Abulfeda’. Translated into Latin here, and later also into French and English, this book was the main work of Muslim historiography used by European orientalists well into the 18th century.

The volume is closely connected to Oxford. Gagnier was Lord Almoner’s Professor of Arabic at Oxford from 1724, and he worked from the Bodleian manuscript of Abū al-Fidāʾ’s work, the 1487 MS Pococke 303—which, though badly damaged, can still be found in the Bodleian Library today. The book was printed at the Sheldonian Theatre, with its typical vignette on the title page open here, by the authority of the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, Robert Shippen (1675–1745).