Al-kindī on finding buried treasure

Arabic Sciences and Philosophy

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 57-90

  Burnett, Charles ^a   Yamamoto, Keiji ^a   Yano, Michio ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949410362     PISSN: 09574239     EISSN: 14740524     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0957423900002265     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. A useful introduction to Islamic treasure-hunting and a guide to the bibliography on it is provided in Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion (Harmondsworth, 1994), pp. 184-90. See also Ahmed Bey Kamal, Livre des perles enfouies et du mystere precieux au sujet des indications des cachettes, des trouvailles et des tresors (Cairo, 1907) (an edition and translation of the anonymous al-Durr almaknuz). We are grateful to Gerrit Bos, Robert Irwin, David King and David Pingree for their advice.
2. Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. VII (Leiden, 1979), p. 112, no. 2. The chapters on buried treasures are nos. 65 and 66 of the 138 chapters in the book and have been transcribed from the list of chapter-headings in MSS Princeton 4007, fols. 2r-3r and Berlin 5879, fol. 2.
3. M.S. Milan, Ambrosiana, C 170; Sezgin, GAS, VII, 107, no. 21.
4. M.S. Berlin 5876, p. 252 (see also D.A. King, A Catalogue of the Scientific Manuscripts in the Egyptian National Library [in Arabic], 2 vols. [Cairo, 1981-1986], vol. II. p. 672).
5. MS Cambridge Gg. 3.19, fols. 52”-53r; Sezgin, GAS, VII, 124.
6. M.S. Cairo, Egyptian National Library, 639, 31 dm (see King, Catalogue, II, 788). For other, anonymous, chapters on buried treasure in the Egyptian National Library, see King, Catalogue, II, 722 and 788.
7. Ch. Burnett, ‘Al-Kindi on Judicial Astrology: “The Forty Chapters'”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 3 (1993): 77-117. We are again most grateful to Professor Roshdi Rashed for loaning us a copy of the microfilm, and to Hillary Wiesner for initial transcriptions of some of the MSS.
8. ‘AlKindus, De Iudiciis’ is the only manuscript mentioned in Lilly's ‘Catalogue of Astrological Authors’ at the end of Christian Astrology; see fol. Nnnnnv. He quotes the text on p. 218, the first words of which read: ‘Alkindus giveth this generall rule concerning Treasure, or any thing obscured in the ground; Erect your Figure aright, consider the severall aspects of the Planets, if there be in the ascendant, or in any Angle a Fortune, say, there is Treasure in the ground, and that the thing hid is still in the ground, the quantity, price, esteem thereof, shall be according to the potency, vertue or debility of the Fortune.’
9. ‘From Arabic Books and Manuscripts II: Kindiana’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 69 (1949): 149-50. Rosenthal's hesitation over accepting the attribution to al-Kindi in the manuscript would seem to be unjustified.
10. GAS, VII, 133, no. 15.
11. F. Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. VI (Leiden, 1978), p. 154, no. 8.
12. This work has no attribution, but is possibly the same as the R. fi al-'amal bi-alala al-musamma al-gami'a, mentioned as a work by al-Kindi by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a (see Rosenthal, ‘From Arabic books and manuscripts IP, p. 150); the sequence of folios in the manuscript has been disturbed.
13. Rosenthal, ‘From Arabic books and manuscripts IF, pp. 150-1.
14. The history of this text has been told in Burnett, “The Forty Chapters.”
15. The original folio numbers cannot be read on the microfilm.
16. An edition of the text is given in Sheila M. Low-Beer, ‘Hermann of Carinthia: the “Liber Imbrium”, the “Fatidica” and the “De indagatione cordis'”, Ph.D thesis (City University of New York, 1979), pp. 254-80. This edition, however, can only be regarded as provisional. The manuscripts and the contents of the works are described briefly in Ch. Burnett, ‘Arabic into Latin in twelfth century Spain: the works of Hermann of Carinthia’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 13 (1978): 100-34 (see pp. 118-21). Portions of the work also appear in Kues, 209, fols. 44r-46r (part A only) and Admont, 481, fol. 7r ('Messahala, Liber absconditorum'; section on buried treasure only).
17. Other texts in Latin on hidden and buried things need to be investigated for their relation to each other and to Arabic texts. These include the chapters ‘de occultatione anuli sive alterius rei secundum Dorotheum’ (incipit: ‘Cum aliquis occultaverit tibi anulum vel aliud quodlibet in aliquo loco in domo et volueris invenire eum. ‘), ‘in quadrante, hoc est figura extractionis occultorum secundum regulam hyles’ (inc.: ‘Inveniuntur per earn occulta per quadrantem nutu dei.'), and ‘Tractatus Dorothei in occultis’ (incipit: ‘Cum interrogatus fueris de thesauro vel de aliqua re occulta. ‘) which follow each other in Paris, BN, lat. 16204, pp. 425-6 and other MSS.