Mathematical notebook, and commonplace book, circa 1689-1769

Manuscript notebook, possibly kept by Harvard students, containing 17th century English transcriptions of arithmetic and geometry texts, one of which is dated 1689-1690; 18th century transcriptions from John Ward’s “The Young Mathematician’s Guide”; and notes on physics lectures delivered by John Winthrop, the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard from 1738 to 1779. The notebook also contains 18th century reading notes on Henry VIII, Tudor succession, and English history from Daniel Neal’s “The History of the Puritans” and David Hume’s “History of England,” and notes on Ancient history, taken mainly from Charles Rollin’s “The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Grecians.” Additionally included are an excerpt from Plutarch’s “Lives” and transcriptions of three articles from “The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle,” published in 1769: “A Critique on the Works of Ovid”; a book review of “A New Voyage to the West-Indies”; and “Genuine Anecdotes of Celebrated Writers, &.” The flyleaf contains the inscription “Semper boni aliquid operis facito ut diabolus te semper inveniat occupatum,” a variation on a quote of Saint Jerome that translates approximately as “Always good to do some work so that the devil may always find you occupied.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Harvard College undergraduates often copied academic texts and lecture notes into personal notebooks in place of printed textbooks. Winthrop used Ward’s textbook in his class, while the books of Hume, Neal, and Rollin were used in history courses taught at Harvard in the 18th century.

Summons and recognizance for Hugh Woodcock, 1730

An early colonial summons and recognizance for Hugh Woodcock, who was charged with adultery. John Shoreland was surety for Woodcock's appearance in court. Woodcock failed to appear, and Shoreland failed to produce him, so the Court declared a default and ordered Shoreland's arrest and detention.

A synopsis of naturall philosophy according to the method of the ancients, but improved & augmented with the notions of later philosophers : manuscript, 1677-1679

Possibly autograph, dated at end of volume: Finitu[m] mart: 14, 1678/9. Imperfect copy with title page missing; supplied from a MS copy, dated 29 March 1680, now in the Bodleian Library.

Usul-i fıkıhtan haşiyeli Mecami ül-hakaik

[Muḥammad ibn Muṣṭafá Khādimī].

al- Fatāwá al-Sirājīyah

[ʻAlī ibn ʻUthmān al-Ūshī].

Ishārāt al-uṣūl ilá mafātīḥ al-aḥkām ḥasaba mā yaqtaḍīh al-awqāt wa-al-ayyām

bi-saʻy Mīrzā Zayn al-ʻĀbidīn.

Ḥāshīyat al-Ṭarasūsī ʻalá Mirʼāt al-uṣūl

li-Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭarasūsī.

Mukhtaṣar al-Shaykh Khalīl ibn Isḥāq fī al-fiqh ʻalá madhhab al-Imām Mālik ibn Anas al-Aṣbaḥī

[Khalīl ibn Isḥāq al-Jundī].

Insularum Indiae Orientalis: nova descriptio

Ioannis Ianssonius.

The Turkish Empire in Europe, Asia, and Africa: dividid into all its governments, together with the other territories that are tributary to it, as also the dominions of ye Emperor of Marocco [sic] according to the newest and most exact observations

by H. Moll.

Ijāzat Aḥmad ibn ʻUbayd Allāh al-ʻAṭṭār li-Muḥammad ibn Shafīʻ Sulṭān : manuscript, [ca. 1780-1800]

An ijāzah issued by Aḥmad ibn ʻUbayd Allāh al-ʻAṭṭār to his student Muḥammad ibn Shafīʻ Sulṭān. The student's name is mentioned on fol. 1v; the master's name on fol. 6r. In the ijāzah al-ʻAṭṭār traces his authority back to al-Qasṭallānī's al-Mawāhib al-ladunnīyah, then to al-Shāfiʻī, and then gives his isnād of a musalsal ḥadīth.

Hādhihi Risālah fī bayān masāyil al-iʻtiqād / lil-ʻAllāmah Yaḥyá ibn Abī Bakr al-Ḥanafī : manuscript, 1870 or 71

Written in one column, 9 lines per page, in black.

al- Taṣrīḥ bi-ghawāmiḍ al-Talwīḥ : manuscript, undated

Title from f. 1r.

Fatḥ al-ʻazīz li-ahl al-tamyīz : manuscript, [ca. 1686]

Written in one column, 17 lines per page, in black rubricated in red, framed within triple red, golden and black lines.

al- Murabbaʻ fī ḥukm al-ʻaqd ʻalá al-madhāhib al-arbaʻ : manuscript, [1735 or 6]

With: Hādhihi al-Fatāwá lil-ʻAllāmah al-Shaykh Muḥammad al-Khalīlī al-Maqdisī al-Shāfiʻī (ff. 4v-39r).