Persian Manuscripts in the Libraries of McGill University: Brief Union Catalogue (review)

Adam Gacek is to be commended for his continuing work on cataloguing the Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish manuscripts in the McGill library system, which has the largest concentration of Arabic script manuscripts in Canada. This volume, published as volume 17 in the Fontanus Monograph Series, is a companion to Gacek's earlier Arabic Manuscripts in the Libraries of McGill University: Union Catalogue, which was published in 1991 as volume 1 in the series. It describes the Persian-language manuscripts held in a number of individual collections in the McGill University library system, including those in the Blacker-Wood Library of Zoology and Ornithology, the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, the Library of the Institute of Islamic Studies, and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division. As is the case with most important Islamic manuscript collections, the McGill collections have their individual histories and rationales. The largest number of manuscripts, which are held in the Blacker-Wood and Osler libraries, represent the medical and scientific interests of such late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collectors as Casey A. Wood (1856–1942), founder of the library of ornithology at McGill. Most of these manucripts were purchased on behalf of McGill by the Russian Orientalist, Wladimir Ivanow, who worked at the time for the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal.

Described in the catalogue are 338 individual texts in Persian language, which complement the 265 described in the above-mentioned catalogue of Arabic manuscripts. Besides medicine and the natural sciences, the topics covered comprise all the Islamic religious sciences, including Qur'anic exegesis, jurisprudence, theology, and mysticism, as well as history and literature. The manuscripts span the period from the fifteenth to the twentienth centuries, with the bulk dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since Persian was the main literary language of the eastern Islamic world during this period, the places of provenance of the manuscripts include not only Iran and Afghanistan, but also Muslim India. The oldest is the eleventh-century work on the natural sciences entitled Nuzhat-namah-i 'Alayi, which was copied in 1404 and which contains numerous colour illustrations of birds, animals, and plants (no. 201). Most valuable from the point of view of the history of medicine are the many works by the physician Yusuf (b. Muhammad Yusufi Haravi), who was associated with the court of the Timurid ruler of Herat, Sultan-Husayn Bayqara. A number of works are listed as anonymous, but perhaps researchers will now help with their identification. For my part, I would like to suggest that the Risalah-i saydiyah (no. 237) might be an abridged version of the work entitled Kitab al-saydiyah by the chief religious authority (shaykh al-Islam) of late fifteenth-century Herat on the proper method of hunting and the admissibility of consuming various types of game from the standpoint of Islamic law. (It is described in the catalogue of the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan in Tashkent, nos. 3704 and 5225/iii, and likewise contains an alphabetical list of animals, birds, and insects in its last chapter.)

The catalogue is arranged alphabetically, according to the title of the work, which is given both in transliteration and in Arabic script. This arrangement requires the user to know the exact title in Persian or Arabic, which, given the medieval tendency towards flowery, punning, and allusory titles, is not always easy to recall or possible to anticipate. This drawback is alleviated, however, by the excellent indices, which allow one to search alphabetically by author as well as by subject matter. Other indices list the Arabic script titles, scribes and calligraphers, patrons and former owners, and the dates of the dated manuscripts, in chronological order. Finally, a concordance provides the corresponding shelf and catalogue numbers in the individual McGill collections. There are numerous reproductions throughout of folios from various notable or illustrated manuscripts.

The entries are concisely...