• Patterned paper binding with worn spine of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Title page with oval biography and stamps of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Title page and front pastedown of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Ornamented opening, pages 2–3 of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Text and marginal commentary, pages 4–5 of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Text and marginal commentary, pages 8–9 of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Text and marginal commentary, pages 10–11 of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Text and marginal commentary, pages 12–13 of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Later text and marginal commentary of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Further text and marginal commentary of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Text and marginal commentary, pages 148–149 of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Final opening, pages 186–187 of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
  • Blank leaf with long closed tear of al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven Muʿallaqāt.
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Al-Zawzanī’s commentary on the seven pre-Islamic odes, lithographed in Cairo

€2.500,00 EUR
€2.500,00 EUR

Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad al-Zawzanī (d. 1093)

Sharḥ al-muʿallaqāt al-sabʿa

[Cairo]: Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥajar al-Bāhira, Rabīʿ al-ākhir 1277 AH [1860].

Pagination to 187. Arabic lithographic text with commentary in the margins. Decorated title-page incorporating a short biographical notice; concluding table of the seven odes.

Patterned paper-covered boards with a brown spine strip.

Circular ink stamps and pencil markings on the title-page, not securely attributed.

Al-Zawzanī’s commentary joins the celebrated pre-Islamic odes to the philological learning needed to study their language. This Egyptian edition brings early Arabic poetry and medieval scholarship into Cairo’s nineteenth-century book trade.

The Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥajar al-Bāhira was a lithographic workshop. Project Naggari identifies the press’s manager for this edition as Maḥmūd Efendi, a Maltese member of the stationers’ trade in Khān al-Khalīlī. The same record names Naṣr Abū al-Wafāʾ al-Hūrīnī as corrector and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān as the commissioning party. These credits locate its production among the craftspeople, scholars and financiers of Cairo’s commercial book district.

Lithography allowed the workshop to reproduce flowing Arabic script and marginal commentary together, retaining the visual organisation of a manuscript. The decorated title-page includes a biographical notice; the concluding opening supplies a table of the seven odes and corrections discovered after printing. The book thus preserves both the calligraphic skills of lithographic production and the continuing labour of textual correction.

Condition

Spine strip worn. Extensive rubbing and losses to the covering paper expose the boards; corners worn and rounded. Pronounced vertical cracking at the front of the binding, with strained or split inner hinges. Browning, spotting, folded corners and minor marginal chips. The final contents leaf has a long closed horizontal tear.

References

  • Özel, Ahmet. “Zevzenî, Hüseyin b. Ahmed.” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 44, 2013, pp. 312–13. Source
  • Project Naggari. “Printed Books.” The Literary World of a Nineteenth-Century Egyptian Sheikh, entry n1t54. Source

Artem reference: 207.

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