A Rediscovered Autograph Manuscript by Mordekay Finzi

An autograph Hebrew manuscript written by the Italian scholar Mordekay ben Avraham Finzi (Bologna, early fifteenth century-Mantua 1475), long regarded as lost, is described. A short note on this codex was published at the end of the nineteenth century; then the manuscript was bought by the orientalist Leone Caetani and donated to the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome (where it is presently MS Or. 259). For unknown reasons, the codex is not listed in the general inventory of Accademia dei Lincei oriental manuscripts, published in 1926.

The codex contains Hebrew versions of: Euclid's Elements, Books I-VII; Avraham Ibn Ezra's Book of the Astrolabe; Ibn al-Ṣaffār's Illustration of the Astrolabe by the Scholar Ptolemy; Ibn al-Zarqāllu's Epistle on the Construction of the Plate Called ṣafīḥah; Qusṭā Ibn Lūqā's Book on the Construction of the Celestial Globe; and several anonymous or pseudonymous texts about the construction of astrolabes, spheres, sundials, and quadrants.