Manuscript Center 5th International Conference (6-8 May 2008) Lost and Embedded Manuscript Texts                                       Resident Scholar Program

A significant, rare, untitled treatise on modern sciences that is more of a technical descriptive catalog than a regular book, containing detailed illustrations of engineering tools, machines, scales, astronomical charts, telescopes, surgical instruments, transverse sections through human body and plants, as well as maps of the continents that are carried out not in the conventional way like Claudius Ptolemy, al-Idrīsī and Ibn-Hawqal and other ancient geographers, but according to the modern techniques of mapping. It is evident that the author was well versed in astronomy as he drew the orbits, following first the methods of Copernicus, then Ptolemy, and Tycho Brahe, as if he is recording pictorially the development of astronomy.
The importance of the manuscript lies in being a momentous document of the history of the modern scientific renaissance in the Arab countries. As it appears from the colophon, the manuscript is dated back to 1225 AH (1810 AD) by an anonymous transcriber (in Damietta, Egypt), i.e., it was transcribed during the early period of the modern renaissance in Egypt and the Arab World, which means accordingly that it was written several years earlier.
The author is the priest ‘Īsā Petro of Jerusalem, who translated and drew the illustrations. He wrote a short preface that reads: “Technical illustrations help the mind comprehensively and lead it to realize mental objects with the perceptive eye of the body…” He composed it- as he indicates in the preface- for the reverent Logozaní Señor Basily, one of the best friends of the Arabs! (A more correct reading might be Basily Khālīl, pride of the Arab race) 19 folios, 24 x 17 cm, with a sheet (32 x 24 cm) of a climatic map on one side and an astronomical map of the universe on the other.
The Manuscript Center was keen to publish the manuscript in hand electronically, to be available on the largest possible scale. Thus, a virtual browser has been executed and is currently on display in the Manuscript and Rare Book Showroom. Furthermore, a digital copy has recently been published within the framework of the Digital Manuscript Library project, one of the most important heritage endeavors adopted by the BA.
Alexandria Municipal Library Collection at the BA, no. 1449/ C Astronomy.