Details
Object numberMS 1487 [Handlist 36a]
Title[Majmū‘ al-rasā’il]
Creatoral-Ḥusayn b. ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Qummī (Author)
DescriptionThis manuscript and the one discussed in the next entry seem to be the only known copies of a collection of letters by a celebrated poet and secretary in the service of the Ṣulayḥid kings, named in the opening lines of this manuscript as al-Ḥusayn b. ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Qummī.2
This author is mentioned not only by the Yemeni Ismaili historians of the Ṣulayḥid dynasty (‘Umara and Idrīs), but also in the pan-Islamic biographical dictionaries of his contemporary ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī, Ibn Khallikān, Yāqūt and (wholly dependent on the earlier authors) al-Ṣafadī. A selection of his poems is also found in a manuscript of Yemeni provenance now in the British Library, described by Rieu (Supplement, 1053, I), who read his shuhra as 'Ibn Alqam'; this form is used also by Brockelmann (GALS, I, p. 459), whose entry on this author is entirely dependent on Rieu.
‘Umāra says that he died in Zabīd in 482/1089-90. Yāqut, however, says that Ibn Qumm (as he consistently calls him) was born in Zābid in 530/1135-1136 and died in 581/1185-1186. These dates must be a century too late; it seems likely that Yāqūt's source mentioned only the tens and units of these dates and that Yāqūt situated them in the wrong century. Yāqūt adds that he was eminent among the Yemenis in poetry, prose and letter writing. The present collection has not been noted in any of the bibliographies or catalogues of Ismaili literature, but it is cited (on the basis of this manuscript) by Husayn Hamdani several times in his book on the history of the Ṣulayḥids of 1955 (where his name is vocalised as al-Qimmī), and there is also a short reference to this manuscript in a footnote in Ayman Fu’ād Sayyid’s edition of the seventh volume of the ‘Uyūn al-akhbār of Idrīs. There is no title indicated in the manuscript; I follow Husayn Hamdani in giving it the descriptive title Majmū‘ al-rasā’il It contains ten epistles.
1. (beginning p. 1): A letter to al-sulṭān al-ajall Saba’ b. Aḥmad b. al-Muẓaffar b. ‘Alī al-Ṣulayḥī (the name Saba’ is unpointed in the manuscript and the following (i)bn is written twice, at the end ofline 2 and the beginning of line 3; Ms. 1488 has the same defective spelling of Saba' followed by (i)bn twice in the same line, a sure indication that Ms. 1488 is copied from 1487). This Saba’ ruled at least part of the Ṣulayḥid territories contemporaneously with the famous queen al-Sayyida al-Ḥurra, to whom, according to the famous story, he was married for just one day; he is reported to have died in 492/1099. The present copy contains the statement that this letter was written in Sha‘bān 465 (April-May 1073); the year is indicated in figures in the text (the last digit is ambiguous and seems to have been altered) and repeated in the margin (where it was apparently written first as 456 and then corrected to 465). One might note that the first mention of Saba’ in Idrīs’s ‘Uyūn, VII, p. 119, is in connection with the events of 459/1067.
This same letter is quoted verbatim by Yāqūt on the authority of a (lost) book by al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Ṭāhir al-Sulufī (as I read the name; Suluf is a Yemeni tribe) from the year 568/1172-73, whereby Yāqūt also mentions that it was addressed to Saba’ b. Aḥmad ‘after his withdrawal from the Yemen’, but he does not give its date. There are quite significant variants between the text cited by Yaqut and that found in this manuscript, but they are definitely the same document. It would be useful to edit it on the basis of the two separate textual strands.
2. (beginning p. 7): A short extract 'from a letter which he wrote ilā l-ḥaḍrat al-makkiyya al-mukarramiyya’, presumably meaning the ruling
sharifs of Mecca.
3. (beginning p. 8): His response to a letter from one al-Qāḍī Ismā‘īl b. Muḥammad al-Ismā‘īlī, about whom I have no other information.
4. (beginning p. 11): A letter to a doctor by the name of al-Ḥusayn b. Abi’l-Taghallub al-Ṭabīb.
5. (beginning p. 15): His reply to al-Qāḍī Ismā‘īl b. Muḥammad b. Ja‘da, perhaps the same person as the addressee of no. 3.
6. (beginning p. 17): A letter to Najm b. Bishāra al-Marjānī. This person is mentioned in passing in Idrīs, ‘Uyūn, VII, pp. 155-156.
7. (beginning p. 19): An official letter which he wrote ‘on behalf of’ (‘alā lisān ...) al-amīr al-dā‘ī ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Ṣulayḥī, the founder of the Ṣulayḥid state, to the Fatimid caliph, al-imām al-Mustanṣir bi’llāh.
8. (beginning p. 22): An extract of another letter on behalf of ‘Alī b. Muḥammad to the same caliph.
9. (beginning p. 26): An extract from a letter on behalf of ‘Alī’s son and successor al-Malik al-Awḥad al-Mukarram to someone called al-sulṭān Ma‘n b. Jawshab.
10. (pp. 36 to 71): A long letter on behalf of the same al-Malik al-Awḥad al-Mukarram to the Caliph al-Mustanṣir. It has been published (from this manuscript) in Husayn Hamdani’s al-Ṣulayḥiyyūn, pp. 308-318. The date of the letter is given at the end (p. 71) as the first day (ghurra) of Dhu’l-hijja 460 (1 October 1068).
The manuscript ends with an elaborate colophon (pp. 72-73) stating that it (or perhaps rather its archetype) was copied from a manuscript produced by the 21st da‘i, Ḥusayn b. Idrīs b. Ḥasan (etc.; the genealogy given here goes back 38 generations), dated Thursday 23 Shawwāl 889 (11 November 1484, a long time before his accession as da‘i).
1. The fact that Ms. 1488 is patently copied from this one justifies the designation of the present copy as 'unique'.
2. A discussion of this name is in order. His shuhra appears in the sources in three forms: (1) ﺍﻟﻘﻢ ﺍﭔﻦ (2) ﺍﭔﻦﻗﻢ and (3) ﺍﻟﻘﻤﻰ . The first is used by al-Kātib, ‘Umāra, Ibn Khalliqān, and by Idrīs in those passages where he is dependent on ‘Umāra; the second is used only by Yaqu.t (both in his biographical and his geographical dictionaries); the third is used in the present collection of letters, in the British Library fragment of his dīwān, and by Idrīs in those passages where he is not dependent on ‘Umarā- it is thus the form supported by the native Yemeni Ismaili tradition. Al-Ṣafadī, who is dependent both on al-Kātib and on Yāqūt, has (1) in the superscription and (2) in the body of the text. The third form is presumably to be read as al-Qummi, implying descent from a native of the famous Persian city of Qumm, and this interpretation is supported by the fact that (according to nasab cited by Yāqūt) our poet had a great grandfather by the name of ﻣﻤﻮﯾﻪ, presumably *Mamōya, *Mamawayh, which would seem to be a (late Middle) Persian diminutive from Muḥammad. The second variant could then be interpreted as Ibn Qumm, 'son of the city of Qumm'. But to read the first as 'Ibn al-Qumm' is problematic, given the fact that the place name Qumm does not take the article in Arabic; I would suggest therefore that the contemporary anthologist al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī miscopied 'Ibn al-Qummī' as ﺍﻟﻘﻢ ﺍﭔﻦ (possibly reading it, like Rieu and Brockelmann, centuries later, as 'Ibn Alqam') and that this erroneous form was adopted by the later authors wholly or partially dependent on al-Kātib, namely ‘Umāra, Idrīs, Ibn Khalliqān and al-Ṣafadī.I add that the elative of the stem 1-q-m does not actually ever occur in Arabic.
REFERENCES: The primary and secondary sources concerning al-Qummī (alias Ibn Qumm or Ibn al-Qummī), are enumerated in Ayman Fu’ād Sayyid (1974), pp. 92-93 and in his 2002 edition of Idrīs, ‘Uyūn, VII, pp. 162-3, fn. 4; see also the index to the latter publication for the references in Idrīs’s book.
DESCRIPTION: modem brown cloth binding with leather trim; 37 folios (73 pages); no catchwords visible; all the pages have been remargined with the loss of some letters at the beginning and end of some lines: the present size of the pages is 23.5 x 14.5 em; the original pages, as now trimmed, measure 15.5 x 8.5 em; the written area is 14 x 8 em; 15 lines; black ink with rubrics in purple and some punctuation in red; naskh, with some cursive features; the remargined pages have two black lines and two red lines around the original page; no indication of title, scribe or date; seal on the recto of the first folio.
This author is mentioned not only by the Yemeni Ismaili historians of the Ṣulayḥid dynasty (‘Umara and Idrīs), but also in the pan-Islamic biographical dictionaries of his contemporary ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī, Ibn Khallikān, Yāqūt and (wholly dependent on the earlier authors) al-Ṣafadī. A selection of his poems is also found in a manuscript of Yemeni provenance now in the British Library, described by Rieu (Supplement, 1053, I), who read his shuhra as 'Ibn Alqam'; this form is used also by Brockelmann (GALS, I, p. 459), whose entry on this author is entirely dependent on Rieu.
‘Umāra says that he died in Zabīd in 482/1089-90. Yāqut, however, says that Ibn Qumm (as he consistently calls him) was born in Zābid in 530/1135-1136 and died in 581/1185-1186. These dates must be a century too late; it seems likely that Yāqūt's source mentioned only the tens and units of these dates and that Yāqūt situated them in the wrong century. Yāqūt adds that he was eminent among the Yemenis in poetry, prose and letter writing. The present collection has not been noted in any of the bibliographies or catalogues of Ismaili literature, but it is cited (on the basis of this manuscript) by Husayn Hamdani several times in his book on the history of the Ṣulayḥids of 1955 (where his name is vocalised as al-Qimmī), and there is also a short reference to this manuscript in a footnote in Ayman Fu’ād Sayyid’s edition of the seventh volume of the ‘Uyūn al-akhbār of Idrīs. There is no title indicated in the manuscript; I follow Husayn Hamdani in giving it the descriptive title Majmū‘ al-rasā’il It contains ten epistles.
1. (beginning p. 1): A letter to al-sulṭān al-ajall Saba’ b. Aḥmad b. al-Muẓaffar b. ‘Alī al-Ṣulayḥī (the name Saba’ is unpointed in the manuscript and the following (i)bn is written twice, at the end ofline 2 and the beginning of line 3; Ms. 1488 has the same defective spelling of Saba' followed by (i)bn twice in the same line, a sure indication that Ms. 1488 is copied from 1487). This Saba’ ruled at least part of the Ṣulayḥid territories contemporaneously with the famous queen al-Sayyida al-Ḥurra, to whom, according to the famous story, he was married for just one day; he is reported to have died in 492/1099. The present copy contains the statement that this letter was written in Sha‘bān 465 (April-May 1073); the year is indicated in figures in the text (the last digit is ambiguous and seems to have been altered) and repeated in the margin (where it was apparently written first as 456 and then corrected to 465). One might note that the first mention of Saba’ in Idrīs’s ‘Uyūn, VII, p. 119, is in connection with the events of 459/1067.
This same letter is quoted verbatim by Yāqūt on the authority of a (lost) book by al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Ṭāhir al-Sulufī (as I read the name; Suluf is a Yemeni tribe) from the year 568/1172-73, whereby Yāqūt also mentions that it was addressed to Saba’ b. Aḥmad ‘after his withdrawal from the Yemen’, but he does not give its date. There are quite significant variants between the text cited by Yaqut and that found in this manuscript, but they are definitely the same document. It would be useful to edit it on the basis of the two separate textual strands.
2. (beginning p. 7): A short extract 'from a letter which he wrote ilā l-ḥaḍrat al-makkiyya al-mukarramiyya’, presumably meaning the ruling
sharifs of Mecca.
3. (beginning p. 8): His response to a letter from one al-Qāḍī Ismā‘īl b. Muḥammad al-Ismā‘īlī, about whom I have no other information.
4. (beginning p. 11): A letter to a doctor by the name of al-Ḥusayn b. Abi’l-Taghallub al-Ṭabīb.
5. (beginning p. 15): His reply to al-Qāḍī Ismā‘īl b. Muḥammad b. Ja‘da, perhaps the same person as the addressee of no. 3.
6. (beginning p. 17): A letter to Najm b. Bishāra al-Marjānī. This person is mentioned in passing in Idrīs, ‘Uyūn, VII, pp. 155-156.
7. (beginning p. 19): An official letter which he wrote ‘on behalf of’ (‘alā lisān ...) al-amīr al-dā‘ī ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Ṣulayḥī, the founder of the Ṣulayḥid state, to the Fatimid caliph, al-imām al-Mustanṣir bi’llāh.
8. (beginning p. 22): An extract of another letter on behalf of ‘Alī b. Muḥammad to the same caliph.
9. (beginning p. 26): An extract from a letter on behalf of ‘Alī’s son and successor al-Malik al-Awḥad al-Mukarram to someone called al-sulṭān Ma‘n b. Jawshab.
10. (pp. 36 to 71): A long letter on behalf of the same al-Malik al-Awḥad al-Mukarram to the Caliph al-Mustanṣir. It has been published (from this manuscript) in Husayn Hamdani’s al-Ṣulayḥiyyūn, pp. 308-318. The date of the letter is given at the end (p. 71) as the first day (ghurra) of Dhu’l-hijja 460 (1 October 1068).
The manuscript ends with an elaborate colophon (pp. 72-73) stating that it (or perhaps rather its archetype) was copied from a manuscript produced by the 21st da‘i, Ḥusayn b. Idrīs b. Ḥasan (etc.; the genealogy given here goes back 38 generations), dated Thursday 23 Shawwāl 889 (11 November 1484, a long time before his accession as da‘i).
1. The fact that Ms. 1488 is patently copied from this one justifies the designation of the present copy as 'unique'.
2. A discussion of this name is in order. His shuhra appears in the sources in three forms: (1) ﺍﻟﻘﻢ ﺍﭔﻦ (2) ﺍﭔﻦﻗﻢ and (3) ﺍﻟﻘﻤﻰ . The first is used by al-Kātib, ‘Umāra, Ibn Khalliqān, and by Idrīs in those passages where he is dependent on ‘Umāra; the second is used only by Yaqu.t (both in his biographical and his geographical dictionaries); the third is used in the present collection of letters, in the British Library fragment of his dīwān, and by Idrīs in those passages where he is not dependent on ‘Umarā- it is thus the form supported by the native Yemeni Ismaili tradition. Al-Ṣafadī, who is dependent both on al-Kātib and on Yāqūt, has (1) in the superscription and (2) in the body of the text. The third form is presumably to be read as al-Qummi, implying descent from a native of the famous Persian city of Qumm, and this interpretation is supported by the fact that (according to nasab cited by Yāqūt) our poet had a great grandfather by the name of ﻣﻤﻮﯾﻪ, presumably *Mamōya, *Mamawayh, which would seem to be a (late Middle) Persian diminutive from Muḥammad. The second variant could then be interpreted as Ibn Qumm, 'son of the city of Qumm'. But to read the first as 'Ibn al-Qumm' is problematic, given the fact that the place name Qumm does not take the article in Arabic; I would suggest therefore that the contemporary anthologist al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī miscopied 'Ibn al-Qummī' as ﺍﻟﻘﻢ ﺍﭔﻦ (possibly reading it, like Rieu and Brockelmann, centuries later, as 'Ibn Alqam') and that this erroneous form was adopted by the later authors wholly or partially dependent on al-Kātib, namely ‘Umāra, Idrīs, Ibn Khalliqān and al-Ṣafadī.I add that the elative of the stem 1-q-m does not actually ever occur in Arabic.
REFERENCES: The primary and secondary sources concerning al-Qummī (alias Ibn Qumm or Ibn al-Qummī), are enumerated in Ayman Fu’ād Sayyid (1974), pp. 92-93 and in his 2002 edition of Idrīs, ‘Uyūn, VII, pp. 162-3, fn. 4; see also the index to the latter publication for the references in Idrīs’s book.
DESCRIPTION: modem brown cloth binding with leather trim; 37 folios (73 pages); no catchwords visible; all the pages have been remargined with the loss of some letters at the beginning and end of some lines: the present size of the pages is 23.5 x 14.5 em; the original pages, as now trimmed, measure 15.5 x 8.5 em; the written area is 14 x 8 em; 15 lines; black ink with rubrics in purple and some punctuation in red; naskh, with some cursive features; the remargined pages have two black lines and two red lines around the original page; no indication of title, scribe or date; seal on the recto of the first folio.
DocumentationBlois, François de. Arabic, Persian and Gujarati Manuscripts: The Hamdani Collection. London: I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2011.
Object typemanuscript