Book of Wonders


The Kitab al-Bulhan, or Book of Wonders, or Book of Surprises, is a mainly 14th century Arabic manuscript compiled – and possibly illustrated – by Abd al-Hasan Al-Isfahani. The codex was probably bound during the reign of Jalayirid Sultan Ahmad at Baghdad, and includes texts on astronomy, astrology, geomancy and a section of full-page illustrated plates dedicated to each discourse topic, e.g. a folktale, a sign of the zodiac, a prophet, etc.

History of Manuscript

The calligrapher, copiest and compiler, italic=no, whose family came from Isfahan in Iran and himself was a native of Baghdad, where he studied the Aristotelic ‘demonstrative’ sciences. It seems the Kitab al-Bulhan was commissioned by – or the idea of – italic=no, who sold it to italic=no in Dec 1409 - Jan 1410. The original codex comprised a series of treatises, which came apart, and when sections were reassembled and some lost, it became jumbled and incoherent. The work includes extracts copied from the Kitab al-mawalid of the astronomer and neo-Platonist Abu Maʿshar al-Balkhi of Balkh in northern Afghanistan.

Manuscript copies

In the late 16th century, two Turkish copies were made from the original for the two daughters of the Ottoman sultan Murad III: Ayşe Sultan and Fatma Sultan. These manuscripts are complete and establish the original order of the treatises of the Kitab al-Bulhan. The codices are now held at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City and the Bibliotèque Nationale, Paris.

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Citations