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.

Kitāb Fatḥ al-jawād bi-sharḥ Manẓūmat Ibn al-ʻImād / taṣnīf al-Shaykh al-Imām al-ʻĀlim al-ʻAllāmah shaykhinā wa-mawlānā Abū al-ʻAbbās al-Shihāb Aḥmad al-Ramlī al-Anṣārī al-Khazrajī : manuscript, 1542

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله الذي بعث محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم رحمة للعالمين ... :Incipit

Hādhihi taʻlīqah laṭīfah fī-mā yataʻallaq bi-qawl al-Nabīy ṣallá Allāhu ʻalayhi wa-sallam "ḥubbiba ilayya min dunyākum al-nisāʼ wa-al-ṭīb wa-juʻilat qurrat ʻaynī fī al-ṣalāt" / taʼlīf al-Shaykh al-Imām al-Ālim al-Allāmah wa-al-baḥr al-fahhāmah Shaykh al-Islām wa-al-muslimīn ʻumdat al-fuqahāʼ wa-al-muḥaddithīn Sayyidī Abū al-Suʻūd ibn Tāj al-Dīn ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Zakī al-Dīn al-Khazrajī al-Shāfiʻī : manuscript, 1685

Written in one column, 15 lines per page, in black rubricated in red. Title written in green and red ink.

Kitāb Sharḥ Burdat al-mukhtār / lil-Shaykh al-Imām al-ʻĀlim al-ʻĀmil Shihāb al-Dīn Abū al-ʻAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʻImād al-Dīn ʻAbd al-Bāqī al-Aqfahsī : manuscript, 1635

Written in one column, 17 lines per page, in black with punctuation in red.