Rhetoric [IO Bijapur 248]

Rhetoric.

This manuscript is now IO Bijapur 248 in the India Office collections.

[metadata: Otto Loth, A Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, (volume 1), no. 850 here with further notations and hyperlinks].

850.

B 248. Size 9 in. by 61/2 in.; foll. 196. Sixteen lines in a page.

I.Foll. 4-36. ḲAZWÎNÎ'S تلخيص المفتاح . See the preceding no.

II.Foll. 39-196. A larger work on Rhetoric, by the same author, arranged like the preceding one, to which it serves as a commentary. It is entitled الايضاح .

This work is of rare occurrence. See Ḥ. Kh. ii. 403, i. 509; cf. Mehren, Rhetorik, p. 8. As the author states in the preface, it contains also the materials of المفتاح which are omitted in his تلخيص , as well as those of the دلائل الاعجاز , by ‘Abd al-ḳâhir Jurjânî (d. A.H. 474),1 which had not been incorporated with المفتاح .

Carefully written in the hand of a scholar, often with distinction of the ''unpointed'' (مهملة) letters.

Of the eighth century. The second treatise has been revised, and collated with another MS. On the margin of it are notes and extracts from earlier commentaries on المفتاح , and from other works.

All the available vacant spaces of this volume are filled with various notes and extracts, in Arabic and Persian. Injured by damp and by insects.

1 See Ḥ. Kh. iii. 235, and Mehren, l.c., p. 8.