A Composite Christian Arabic Manuscript in the Köprülü Library: Ms. Istanbul, Köprülü, Mehmed Âsım Bey, 1 bis

This Notice presents the first detailed description of Ms. Istanbul, Köprülü Library, Mehmed Âsım Bey 1 bis, a composite Christian-Arabic manuscript hitherto known only through a minimal catalogue entry. The codex consists of numerous fragmentary units copied by different hands and brought together without a codicological plan. Its contents include multiple independent Arabic New Testament witnesses—three distinct Gospel manuscripts, fragments of Acts, Pauline Epistles, and the Minor General Epistles, in addition to a lectionary for the fourth week of Len—as well as Christian Arabic doctrinal, legal, and canonical texts, including a previously unknown textual witness to Aḥkām al-ʿAtīqa, Kitāb al-Hudā, and a canon law collection attributed to Michael of Damietta. A detailed analysis of the script, layout, chapter division systems, marginalia, and paratextual features demonstrates that the volume is an ad hoc aggregation rather than a deliberate miscellany. All identifiable Gospel witnesses belong to the Arabic Vulgate tradition (family K), though they preserve divergent chaptering systems and paratextual practices. This Notice further reconstructs the manuscript’s modern provenance through waqf stamps and ownership marks, situating its binding in the first half of the eighteenth century and its later transmission into the Köprülü Library via Mehmed Âsım Bey. Beyond its textual contents, the manuscript offers important evidence for the circulation, fragmentation, and reassembly of Christian Arabic books in the Ottoman period and for the precarious survival of Christian Arabic materials within Islamic library collections.