Title in Arabic or Hebrew
- علم المعادن
Introduction
- This sub-sub-series contains documents dealing with al-Bīrūnī’s treatise on precious stones, «Kitāb al-ǧamāhir fī maʽrifat al-ǧawāhir», a text to which Kahle turned his attention while collecting materials for his studies on Chinese porcelain. In an article published in «Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft» (1936) Kahle translated and studied only parts of this work, in particular the chapters dealing with “items” such as «yāqūt», «al-bullawr», «al-zuǧāǧ», «al-mīnā», «al-aḏrak» and others. Kahle returned to write about this text in an article which is more general in nature, entitled “al-Bīrūnī”, for the «Journal of the Asiatic Society of Pakistan» (1956). The documents preserved in the archive in this regard all relate to the various phases of the working of the articles, and copies of the manuscripts studied i.e. Ms Istanbul, Seray Library, no. 2047).