The Book of Splendours

Introduction.

same hand wrote the passage p. 6.32 from lemā anā why I up to p. 7.5 etḥaml was bound and the passage p. 126.23–28 from aḥmedak I thank you up to wa-teqen and it was confirmed, in both cases using the small blanks that were left by the first copyist. In these instances, the corresponding text of D (foll. Yq and Qḥ) is found on a sheet of paper pasted over the page, which cannot have been placed to repair the leaf, as it is in good condition, but rather to hide the original text. This secondary text written on the pasted-on sheets of paper did not exist when the copy B was made and, consequently, it is likely that the pasted-on sheets of paper did not exist either. What then was the original text written on the page itself, and why was this text not transcribed by B? These are difficult questions to resolve. One could conjecture that this text was in such poor condition due to erasures and corrections that it had become illegible or at the very least presented an unclear meaning.

On the final leaf existing currently, which is in a second hand, the text of the grammar ends on the first page. Then follows, written in red ink, the final formula šlam ktābā d-dayqūtā memmallē zeʿōrā The book of exactitude, the little discourse, is finished, and in black ink, within a frame in red ink, the two notes that Martin reports in his work (Preface, p. 12, note 1)¹. The handwriting of these two notes is the same as that of the leaves in the second hand of the manuscript. These leaves must therefore all originate from the undoubtedly complete restoration of the manuscript that Abdallah executed in 1613–1614 in the Convent of the Forty Martyrs at Mardin.

Martin left unanswered the question of whether the date of the first note, the 1st of Qānūn I December, the year 1596 of the Greeks, i.e., December 1, 1284 of our era, can refer to this manuscript itself (D) or was only transcribed by Abdallah from this manuscript, of which he had copied the leaves in the second hand that are found added in D. The care and accuracy with which Abdallah performed his restoration work

1. The text includes a grammatical note regarding the book, its restoration, and the date of completion in the year 1596 of the Greeks (1284 AD).