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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
I should like to discuss briefly three Arabic treatises that are quite different from one another with regard to content, authorship, and provenance. They do, however, share one interesting feature. Each one survives in just two manuscript copies, both in a Yemeni hand, the one in Arabic script, the other also in the Arabic language but written in Hebrew characters. The circumstances of their survival are instructive concerning the intellectual histories of both Jews and Muslims in the Yemen, and especially with regard to the relationships that obtained between these two communities. We may also add that none of these treatises, each of which is of some interest to its respective field, has been the subject of even a cursory study.
1 For some suggestions as to the identity of this author, see Dodge, B., The Fihrist ofal-Nadim: a tenth century survey of Muslim culture (New York and London, 1970), II, 689Google Scholar.
2 A brief description of this art, made on the basis of a Latin text, may be found in Thorndike, L., A history of magic and experimental science (New York and London, 1923), I, 723Google Scholar. On cauterization in pre-Islamic folk medicine see Ullmann, M., Islamic medicine (Islamic Surveys, II, Edinburgh, 1978), 3Google Scholar.
3 ‘Lista dei manoscritti arabi nuovo fondo della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano’, Rivista degli Studi Orientals 7, 1916–1918, 619–20Google Scholar; according to Ullmann, M., Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden-Köln, 1970), 78–79Google Scholar, this manuscript is missing the twelfth and thirty-third methods.
4 Rosenthal, F., ‘From Arabic books and manuscripts, V: a one-volume library of Arabic philosophical and scientific texts in Istanbul’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 75, 1955, 21Google Scholar; Sezgin, F., Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 6 (Frankfurt, 1978), 158Google Scholar.
5 , Langermann, The Jews of Yemen and the exact sciences [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1987), p. 24, no. 8Google Scholar.
6 Rosenthal, 21.
7 Golb, N., Spertus College of Judaica Yemenite Manuscripts: an illustrated catalogue (Chicago, 1972), 15Google Scholar.
8 MS Spertus Cll, p. 41.
9 Kohut, A., ‘Notes on a hitherto unknown, exegetical, theological and philosophical commentary to the Pentateuch’, Proceedings of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York, 1894), 41Google Scholar; on Ḥoṭer see now the two studies of Blumental, D.: The Commentary of R. Ḣôṭer ben Shelômô to the thirteen principles of Maimonides (Leiden, 1974)Google Scholar; The philosophic questions and answers of ḢHôter ben Shelômô (Leiden, 1981)Google Scholar.
10 Rosenthal, p. 21, n. 13.
11 The Persian translations are briefly described in the catalogue of the Majlis Library in Teheran, x/3 1393–4 and XIII, 312. I am grateful to Professor Madelung, W. for supplying me with this important informationGoogle Scholar.
12 ‘Schriften der Araber in hebraeischen Handschriften’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, 47, 1893, 335–84Google Scholar.
13 Their number may be expected to grow dramatically now that the awesome treasures of Russian libraries are again accessible. We shall here refer only to some additional Yemeni transcriptions that we listed in our monograph (abovė, n. 5.), 23–9, including copies or fragments of Euclid, Simplicius's commentary to Euclid, Ikhwān al-Ṣafā, Thābit b. Qurra's Tashīl al-Majisṭī, the z;ī jes of Kushyār, Ibn Yūnus, and al-Fārisī, Jābir b. Aflaḣ's Iṣlāḥal-Majisṭī, al-Bīrūnī's Tafhīm, and others; we may also mention that, since the publication of that work, we have discovered some more Yemeni transcriptions, the most noteworthy of which is a copy of Ibn al-Haytham's Fī Istikhrāj khaṭṭ niṣf al-nahār bi-ẓill wāḥid, which survives in only two Arabic-letter copies (Sezgin, GAS, v (Frankfurt, 1974), p. 368, no. 21).
14 For example, a partial copy of Alf Laylah wa-laylah now in the possession of the Valmadonna Trust, London, and on film at the Microfilm Institute, Jerusalem (no. 46041)Google Scholar. It was transcribed in 1869 from the printed version (Vol. 3, Calcutta, 1840) by an Iraqi Jew who emigrated to IndiaGoogle Scholar.
15 Rosenthal, 16, 20. Concerning Ibn al-Mufaḍḍal compare Golb, 15–16Google Scholar. A resumé and partial translation of these last two items may be found in Rosenthal, F., ‘From the “Unorthodox” Judaism of medieval Yemen’, Hommages à Georges Vajda, (ed.) G., Nahon and C., Touati (Louvain, 1980), 279–90Google Scholar.
16 United Arab Republic, Ministry of Culture, A list of Arabic manuscripts microfilmed from the Yemen Arab Republic (Cairo, National Library Press, 1967), #355 (microfilm no. 2208)Google Scholar. With regard to the Dustūr, see Steinschneider, M., Die arabische Literatur der Juden (Frankfurt a. M., 1902), §195ü6Google Scholar; Brockelmann, C., Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, Supplementband I (Leiden, 1937), 896, no. 31Google Scholar; and Ullmann, M., Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden-Köln, 1970), 309Google Scholar. Concerning the work of Maimonides (which, though not named in the catalogue, is clearly his Tadbīr al-ṣiḣḣah) see Steinschneider, §158/16, and Ullmann, 168Google Scholar.
17 Goitein, S. D., The Yemenites: history, communal organization, spiritual life (selected studies) [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1983), 120Google Scholar.
18 Goitein, Yemenites, 41.
19 Madelung, W., ‘Shi‘ism: an overview’, Encyclopaedia of religion, vol. 13 (New York and London, 1987), 247Google Scholar. On the relations between the Yemeni and Caspian Zaydis see now also Gouchenour, D. T. III, ‘The penetration of Zaydi Islam into early medieval Yemen’, Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, 1984, 149, 158–60Google Scholar.
20 Goitein, 38; see also p. 78 concerning Persian Jews who achieved high positions in the Yemen