Lot 23

Saadiah ben Elijah Chouraqui, Moneh Mispar (A Treatise on Mathematics), the author's autograph, in Hebrew with Arabic numerals, manuscript on paper [Algeria (Tlemcen), 24 Tevet, 5451 (ie. 26 December 1690)]

Estimate

5,000 - 7,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

109 leaves (1 blank), 220mm. by 150mm., apparently complete with small horizontal catchwords on each leaf, written space 153mm. by 100mm., space for 32 lines in the author's semi-cursive Maghrebi script in black ink with numerous diagrams, tables and equations (often one or more per page), text set within 2-line frame in black ink, each of the nine books beginning with a decorated title and organics cartouche in brown wash, decorated title-page with complex geometric design in black ink, infilled with foliage in same, and touched in light brown wash (some minor damp-staining to upper inner part of design), fols. 2 and 10 partially detached, and small holes in fols. 5 & 6 where ink has eaten through lower outer corners (one repaired with silk), else in good condition, modern half-morocco over pasteboards, with gilt tooled title on spine "MS. 421 / (H. 343)", same repeated on paper label pasted above

Provenance

provenance

1. Written by the author Saadiah ben Elijah Chouraqui in the Jewish community in Tlemcen, north-western Algeria, and completed on 24 Tevet, 5451 (ie. 26 December 1690).

2. Solomon Zalman Hayyim Halberstam (1832-1900); his shelf-number '343'.

5. Sir Moses Montefiore Bart. (1784-1885), acquired from Halberstam's estate in the 1880s. H. Hirschfeld, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts of the Montefiore Library, 1904, no. 421, p. 125. Montefiore sale in our New York rooms, 27-8 October 2004, lot 306.

Catalogue Note

Saadiah ben Elijah Chouraqui came from a family of Jewish scholars in the Maghreb who were renowned for their wisdom and piety. His studies focussed on liturgical poems and mathematics, and he worked in the large Jewish community in Tlemcen, north-western Algeria, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth century was one of the primary satellite towns in the Jewish education network, and was known to his contemporaries as 'the Ocean of Knowledge'.

Mathematics had always held a privileged position among the sciences in the Islamic world, and had drawn in both Greek scholarship (notably in the form of Pythagoras' works) as well as Indian and Persian studies. Placed in an educational atmosphere, within the Islamic world of the Maghreb, Chouraqui took a keen interest in the discipline. The present manuscript is the only witness to his work, which sets out a practical guide to mathematics concentrating on teaching through numerous examples. Using Hindu-Arabic numerals part 1 covers the basics of Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division, and part 2 moves on to processes for checking these arithmetical operations. Part 3 embraces fractions, and part 4 applies these to the basics of business with the 'rule of three': Principal, Profit and Time, also including a discussion of the 'Pythagorean Proposition'. Part 5 examines linear equations, and part 6 and 7, square and cube roots, and numerical series. Part 8 discusses the squaring of the circle, and 9 follows with a series of miscellaneous additions and examples. The author's Hebrew is clear and pleasant and reveals a scholar well versed in Hebrew literature, as well as a lifetime's experience in teaching others.

The critical edition of the text by Gad B. Sarfatti, Mone Mispar: An Arithmetic Treatise, was the inaugural volume in the series Text Studies in the History and Culture of the Jews in the Orient in 1973, but omits the author's verse preface (here fols. 4-6) and a lengthy poem at the end.