<div class="description">
<dl><dd>93 leaves, bound, (9 lines; leaves 1, 94 blank) : 21 cm</dd>
<dd>Manuscript</dd>
<dd>Arabic</dd>
<dd>Title appears on the illuminated title page (fol. 2a); also known as al-Siyāsah fī ʻilm al-firāsah, or al-Firāsah li-ajl al-siyāsah, or Aḥkām al-firāsah</dd>
<dd>Author's name given in text (fol. 2b lines 5-6) and on title page (fol. 2a) as Muḥammad ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Anṣārī al-Sūfī al-Dimashqī, a shaykh of Rabwa in Syria</dd>
<dd>Copy undated; paper, handwriting, vowelling, illuminated title page, etc. suggest a dating ca. 1400</dd>
<dd>Various owners' notes, one dated 1212 [1797 or 1798] are on fol. 2a, nearly all defaced; others are on fol. 93b; fol. 94 is blank except for a small Turkish note mentioning the dates 984 [1576 or 1577] and 988 [1580-1]; fol. 1b has recently penciled notes on the author and title</dd>
<dd>Purchased in 1941 by the Army Medical Library from A. S. Yahuda (ELS 1668)</dd>
<dd>Title page (fol. 2a) of a Mamluk design illuminated with gold, black ink, and blue and white opaque paint; a rectangular band carries the name of the treatise; the author's name is in the large shamsah</dd>
<dd>Illustrations of the line of the hand and the palm are on fols. 86b-88b and 89b</dd>
<dd>Script is a large fully vowelled Naskhi; throughout the text the word al-firāsah (physiognomy) is voweled as al-farāsah (horsemanship); no catchwords; rubrications; some marginalia in later hands, some of it interlinear</dd>
<dd>Paper is thick and nearly opaque; some folios have neither laid nor chain lines visible; some folios have visible laid lines and alternating double and triple chain lines; top of vol. water stained</dd>
<dd>Front and back covers of the binding are taken from different manuscripts; the front cover is of brown leather with blind and gold tooled medallions and borders with block-pressed leather doublure; back cover is of red leather with blind tooled center decorations and border and paper pastedowns on inside cover; recent brown leather binding; modern endpapers</dd>
<dd>Decribed in: Schullian &amp; Sommer. Cat. of incun. MSS., 1950, A58</dd>
<dd>An early and important copy of the most famous of Arabic treatises on physiognomy</dd>
<dd>Microfilm. Washington, D.C. : Army Medical Library, 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm</dd>
<dd>Condition reviewed 20170410</dd>
<dd>digitized. 2018</dd></dl><br>Subjects: Physiognomy; Medicine, Arabic</div>
<div class="fn value">
Dimashqī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Abī Ṭālib, 1256 or 1257-1327</div>
<dl><dd><a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://archive.org/details/9404778.nlm.nih.gov">https://archive.org/details/9404778.nlm.nih.gov</a></dd>
<dd><a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://archive.org/download/9404778.nlm.nih.gov/9404778.pdf">https://archive.org/download/9404778.nlm.nih.gov/9404778.pdf</a></dd></dl>