Dictionaries [IO Islamic 867] حياة الحيوان selections from

Dictionaries.

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 867 in the India Office collections.

[metadata: Otto Loth, A Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, (volume 1), no. 1004 here with further notations and hyperlinks].

1004.

867. Size 10 in. by 61/4 in.; foll. 294. Thirty -one and twenty-nine lines in a page.

كتاب حاوى الحِسان مهذب من حياة الحيوان الكبرى تاليف سيدنا و مولانا الشيخ الامام و الحبر الهمام العلامة العمدة محمد بن عبدالقادر بن محمد الدميرى الشافعى ( sic ) رحمه الله الخ

A selection from the حياة الحيوان , arranged in the same manner, by MUḤAMMAD B. ‘ABD AL-ḲÂDIR b. Muḥammad Damîrî (?) Ḥanafî.1 This work is not generally known. Ḥ. Kh., iii. 5, just mentions the title of it.

The preface begins:

الحمد لله الذى خلق الانسان و فضله تفضيلا

The author, after praising the original work ( كتاب حياة الحيوان الكبرى ) , speaks of his present task as follows:

فانتخبت من هذا الكتاب غرره و التقطت من بحره درره و جمعت ذلك على حروف المعجم كاصله الخ

His selection comprises the digression at الاوز , and more of the poetical quotations than the preceding MS. It has also an original appendix, which treats of the properties ( فضائل) of Sûrah 97.

A good copy, probably made in Egypt, about A.H. 900 [=1494-95 CE], but injured by damp, and defective after fol. 150, 229, and 249, and at the end.

[Johnson.]

1 So in the preface; the preceding name in there effaced: only الدﻣ.. remains.