Philosophy [IO Bijapur 169] Commentary on الهداية

Philosophy.

This manuscript is now IO Bijapur 169 in the India Office collections.

[metadata: Otto Loth, A Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, (volume 1), no. 493 here with further notations and hyperlinks].

493.

B 169. Size 83/4 in. by 43/4 in.; foll.77. At first seventeen, afterwards as many as twenty-three lines in a page.

Another Commentary on the Physics and Metaphysics of Abharî’s الهداية, by Muḥammad b. Mubârak Shâh Bukhârî, commonly called MÎRAK; who probably lived in the eighth century.

This is a commentary by قال ... اقول ; making, with the exception of the first passage (fol.2), only allusions to the text. The author says in his preface, after a simple Ḥamdalah:3

و بعد فقد سالني بعض احبّائي4 ان اكتب للقسمين الطبيعي و الالهي من كتاب الهداية للمولي العلامة .... شرحاً الخ

Legibly written; with various marginal notes, among which are glosses of Saiyid Sharîf. Fol.1 has been supplied carelessly by a different hand.

3 The Beginning given by H. Kh. vi. 474, in from the author’s commentary on the حكمة العين.

4احىاىى (!). Another MS. reads اخوانى.

[ed note: قال ... اقول appears also as a style in the Windham College copy of the commentary on Mughnī al-labīb by ʻAbd Allāh ibn Yūsuf Ibn Hishām (1309-1360) in which the author reports that he composed the work in Aḥmadābād on the orders of Aḥmad Shāh ibn Muḥammad Shāh ibn Muẓaffar Shāh, apparently Aḥmad Shāh II, 1451-58.]