IO Islamic 4083 (Oriental Manuscripts, British Library)

Treatise describing itself as a mukhtaṣar on the art of spherical orbs (celestial and terrestrial) or ṣanʿat-i kurah in connection with the use of astrolabes

Work divided into several faṣl

No diagrams or tables

Colophon date may not be reliable (f. 16v): completed by Murād Gul Bayg (sic) the munajjim, on Friday, 10 Jum. II 1217/8 October 1802

Treatise describing itself as a mukhtaṣar on the art of spherical orbs (celestial and terrestrial) or ṣanʿat-i kurah in connection with the use of astrolabes

Work divided into several bāb

No diagrams or tables

Colophon date may not be reliable (f. 27v): completed by Mirzā Gul Nīk the munajjim ibn Mirzā Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn the munajjim, nabīrah (son’s son) of Mirzā ʿAlī Riyāz̤ī (or Mirzā ʿAlī the mathematician), on Wednesday, 11 Jum. II 1217/9 October 1802

Treatise on the art of spherical orbs (celestial and terrestrial) or ṣanʿat-i kurah in connection with the use of astrolabes

Work divided into several faṣl (22 in total)

Diagrams and tables

Colophon date may not be reliable (f. 40r): completed by Mirzā Gul Nīk the munajjim ibn Mirzā Zayn (written Badīn) al-ʿĀbidīn the munajjim, nabīrah (son’s son) of Mirzā Muḥammad ʿAlī Riyāz̤ī (or Mirzā Muḥammad ʿAlī the mathematician), on Saturday, 17 (hafdahum written as hamdahum) Jum. II 1217/15 October 1802

Folios 41-3 left blank

Fragment from a larger illustrated manuscript of the Persian translation of Zakarīyā Qazvīnī’s cosmological encyclopaedia, ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt va gharāʾib al-mawjūdāt

Translator not identified

Preface omitted in part

Folios disordered

Defective at end with text expunged, perhaps to fake a supposedly erased colophon. However, a surviving catchword indicates the original text followed onto subsequent folios that are at present missing

Early scribal nastaʿliq on fine, thin paper, within gilt ruled jadāval

The illustrations (28 in total), added at the time or a little after the text’s completion, executed in the early- to mid-sixteenth-century North Indian Sultanate, early Timurid or Mughal provincial, or early Deccani Sultanate style; the plain blue ground may have been added later