Raman spectroscopic analysis of selected astronomical and cartographic folios from the early 13th century Islamic ‘Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes’

Abstract

The Arabic treatise ‘Kitāb Gharā’ib al-funūn wa-mulaḩ al-‘uyūn’ (‘The Book of Curiosities…’), which contains a series of important early maps and celestial diagrams has recently been acquired by The Bodleian Library. Previous examination of the text and paper has led to the suggestion that the manuscript is an early thirteenth-century copy of a treatise compiled in the late eleventh century in Egypt. The pigments and inks used for the illustrations on 11 folios selected from the treatise have been analysed using Raman spectroscopy in order to determine their compositions; SEM-EDX analysis has been used to help identify one of the green pigments as a copper-based pigment. The combined analysis shows that the palette is relatively small in comparison with the wide range of colours observable, and consists almost exclusively of cinnabar (or its synthetic equivalent, vermilion), orpiment, lazurite, indigo, a carbon-based black, basic lead carbonate (‘lead white’) and a copper-based green pigment, possibly a form of verdigris (found in only one of the maps). The only comparable study (but by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy) of Arabic material was that of 17 Arabic manuscripts from the eighth to the fifteenth century at the Bibliothèque nationale de France; that study revealed a rather different range palette, which commonly included minium (red lead), copper green and azurite, and mostly excluded indigo. However, 14 of the French manuscripts in the study were Quráns, and therefore not strictly comparable with the Bodleian manuscript, which is from a secular tradition. One of the three secular manuscripts in the French study, a thirteenth-century north African treatise (manuscript BN Arabe 2221), did have a remarkably similar palette to that of the Bodleian manuscript. This is a very small sample base from which to draw substantial conclusions, but the analysis of ‘The Book of Curiosities’ forms a valuable starting point on which to build our knowledge of the production of Arab manuscripts from this location and date. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.