The Book of Splendours

The Manuscripts.

The great Grammar of Barhebraeus was a work frequently read and copied in the Syrian world. The dissemination of this work is manifested by the relatively large number of manuscripts that have preserved it for us. In the following pages, I provide a list of these manuscripts, insofar as I have been able to learn of their existence. For each manuscript, I provide its date and place of origin as much as possible, but I only enter into a detailed description of the manuscript where necessary. For this subject, I refer to the various manuscript catalogues and to my work Book of Rays¹.

1. — The Cod. orient. Palat. no. 208, at the Medicean Laurentian Library² of Florence (F), is one of the oldest, if not the oldest (see no. 2), of the manuscripts of the great Grammar of Barhebraeus that we have at the present time. The dimensions of the manuscript are approximately 0.22m × 0.12m. The first part of this manuscript, fol. 3vo—77ro up to the words ḥd dʾyt one that exists inclusive, p. 125, line 9 of the present edition, was, according to an indication found at the end of the manuscript, written during the lifetime of Barhebraeus, therefore at the latest in 1286. The rest was written by another scribe and finished on 9 Tešrī I October in the year 1604 of the Greeks, that is to say, October 9, 1292 of our era.

1. Book of Rays. The Greater Grammar of Barhebraeus. Translation according to a critically corrected text with text-critical apparatus and an appendix: On Terminology by AXEL MOBERG, I—II, Leipzig 1913, 1907. I cite it hereafter as B. d. Str.

2. ST. EV. ASSEMANUS, Catalogue of oriental manuscripts of the Medicean Laurentian and Palatine libraries, Florence 1742, p. 198 sq. (Cod. No. CXXII), B. d. Str., p. XV sq.