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Fragments of two medical treatises written in Judaeo-Arabic

Folder 1. Excerpt from the Kitab al-Mansuri of al-Razi. 14th century copy from northern Iberia (probably Mallorca). A complete leaf written in Judaeo-Arabic using square Hebrew script, 31 lines, double columns, brown ink, headings in red, ruled with a hard point, contemporary Latin marginalia in brown ink in a neat documentary script. This section of the text discusses the medical properties of various foods, and includes a title "On the effect of pickles and sour substances." [From Rowan Dorin]Folder 2. Unidentified materia medica, 14th century, Maghreb. Two nearly complete leaves, written in Judaeo-Arabic on parchment, text in double columns of Hebrew script, 36 lines, brown ink, headings in red. The text bears the imprint of a second text (presumably a result of being bound alongside it); this is written in Hebrew in a single column, 13/14th century, and contains an unidentified materia medica. The main text is organized by illnesses and cures, and include entries 'On the causes of hiccuping" and "On the treatment for hiccuping." One of the leaves has a later marginal annotation in Castilian, indicating that it was previously used as a binding pastedown in a book belonging to García de Aybar, a canon of the cathedral of Tarazona who died in 1530. [From Rowan Dorin]

Psalter, in Latin, Psalms 146,8 - 149,1 : manuscript fragment

De rerum naturis / Rabanus Maurus : manuscript fragment of a leaf

From a luxury manuscript of Rabanus Maurus’s great encyclopedia De rerum naturis. The text here contains much of the first chapter of Book 2, ‘De Adam et posteris eius usque ad patriarchas’ and the beginning of the second chapter, ‘De patriarchis et ceteris eiusdem aetatis hominibus’. Many of the surviving manuscripts of De rerum naturis bear the evidence of close study by their medieval readers, and the present fragment is no exception. Traces of a border at the top of the right-hand column on the verso indicate that there was once a miniature there.The iconography of the initial here is rather mysterious, but may have related to the miniature which once appeared above it.