A detail of Mars with severed head.

Shelfmark: Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. Or. 133
Folio/page: fol. 47b
Title: Kitāb al-Bulhān ('Book of Wonders') and other works
Other titles: Kitāb al-Bulhān | [Signs of the zodiac: Scorpio, or al-‘Aqrab]
Creators: Irbilī, Ḍiyā' al-Dīn Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, early 15th cent. [author] | Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq, 702?-765 or 6 [author] | Abū al-ʻAbbās Aḥmad ibn Abī ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Miṣrī 14th cent. [author]
Contributors: Haydar ibn al-Haji Adb al Karim ibn al-Jawad al-Mawsili [scribe] | Irbilī, Ḍiyā' al-Dīn Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, early 15th cent. [scribe]
Date: 1400–1450
Languages: Latin | Turkish | Arabic
Description: Arabic collection of astrological, astronomical, and other divinatory texts. |
Layout: Written in 22-23 long lines. |
Illustration of: Kitāb al-Bulhān. Zodiac picture. |
Composite manuscript in Arabic of divinatory works, dating principally from the late 14th century A.D., containing astrological, astronomical and geomantic texts compiled by Abd al-Ḥasan Al-Iṣfāhānī, with illustrations. Fol. 81a is in Turkish. |
Extent: 176 leaves (ff. 80 + 13 + 36 + 33 + 7 + 4 + 3). 245 x 160 mm. |
Layout: Various page formats. |
Hand: Naskh, with title in Eastern qufic, fol. 1b. |
Decoration: 83 illustrations, including miniatures. |
Binding: European calf, 17th century, double blind fillets toward board edges, blind garland rolls on fore-edges of boards, red speckled edges of textblock, numbered on fore-edge in pen, spine title stamped in gilt: Astrolog. Shelfmark on spine stamped in gilt: Bodl. 133. Paper label on spine: Arch. O c.2. |
Provenance: Patron of Kitāb al-Bulhān, 1399, Husayn al-Irbili (inscription ff. 163a and 169a); Bought 1409 by Haydar b. Abd al-Karim, Aleppo (inscription f. 131a); Owned, c. 1608-1610, Yahya b. Muhammad, Edirne (inscription f. i a); Bodleian Library, Nathaniel Palmer bequest, 1717. |
Record Origin: Description based on the Bodleian Library's public card index of Arabic manuscripts with additional enhancements by the OCIMCO project team. Image descriptions based in part on Carboni, S. (1988), Il Kitab al-bulhan di Oxford.
Source: Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. Or. 133.

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Referenced as figure 183 in: M. GORELIK, "Oriental Armour of the Near and Middle East from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Centuries as Shown in Works of Art", in: Islamic Arms and Armour, ed. ROBERT ELGOOD, London 1979
183. From the Kitāb al-Bulhān, Baghdad, c.1399. (Bodleian Library, or. 133)
p.48: The shoulder guard consists of small plates as do the tassets (which do not quite reach the knees). These tassets are often made of plates similar to those on the body. Thigh guards are first portrayed in the works of Junayd al-Sulṭānī (fig. 183) and resemble the mail suspended from the belt under the armour with a big protruding metal disc at the knee. Round gorgets are still in evidence in Iraq, made only of mail in the late fourteenth century (fig. 183; 53).