The Arabic Vulgate in the Library of the Imāmī Scholar Raḍī al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Mūsā Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266)

The Twelver Shīʿī scholar Raḍī al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Mūsā Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266), who hailed from al-Ḥilla and stayed in Baghdad during the Mongol conquest of the city, was a traditionist, and his extensive oeuvre includes writings in the fields of ḥadīth, supplications, history and biography, and polemics, as well as astrology. In addition, Ibn Ṭāwūs is well known for his rich personal library, and the care with which he documented his collection and the use he made of the books in his library when composing his own works is remarkable. Ibn Ṭāwūs compiled a now lost catalog of the holdings of his library, al-Ibāna fī maʿrifat (asmāʾ) kutub al-khizāna. He later supplemented the catalog with his Saʿd al-suʿūd li-l-nufūs manḍūd min kutub waqf ʿAlī b. Mūsā b. Ṭāwūs—essentially a notebook containing excerpts from books that Ibn Ṭāwūs had come across in the course of his studies and of which he kept copies in his own library and which was intended to serve as some kind of catalog raisonné of his library. The work, as it has come down to us, begins with excerpts from various revelatory writings: various copies (maṣāḥif) of the Qurʾān; two texts attributed to Idrīs, namely Ṣaḥāʾif Idrīs and Sunan Idrīs, the Pentateuch, a Zabūr Dāwūd, and the Gospels. The second, larger part of the book is devoted to Qurʾānic exegesis and related matters, and it consists of excerpts from various relevant works, with Ibn Ṭāwūs’s occasional comments interspersed. While Ibn Ṭāwūs’ copy of the Pentateuch has been discussed in an earlier study, where it was shown to be an amalgam of different translation traditions, the present paper is devoted to his copy of the Gospel.