Lot 95 RAHAT AL-ABDAN FI NUZHAT AL-ADHHAN BY HASAN AL-ATTAR, EGYPT, DATED 1296 AH/1878 AD
A medical book about physical serenity and mental wellness, Arabic manuscript on paper, 250 leaves with 2 flyleaves, 23 lines to each page written in bold black naskh script. By Shaykh Hasan al-Attar, an Islamic scholar, Grand Imam of al-Azhar from 1830 to 1835. A "polymathic figure", he wrote on grammar, science, logic, medicine and history. He was a forerunner of Egypt's national revival, and his legacy was a generation of Egyptian modernizers. He wrote prolifically in defence of logic and modern astronomy. His first contact with foreign (non-Muslim) knowledge came during the French occupation of Egypt (1798–1801). Fearing for his safety after the French withdrawal, he left Cairo for Istanbul. There he studied and read voraciously, from 1802 through 1806, when he continued his studies in Alexandretta (today Iskenderum), Izmir and Damascus, returning to Egypt in 1815. He was the first director of the new medical college, defending the necessity of corpse dissection, which he had observed in the Cairo veterinary college, against the non-experimental, theoretical teachings of eleventh-century Avicenna, discarded centuries ago in Christian Europe. While he was a successful lecturer at al-Azhar University, his time there was marked by continual conflict with un-Westernized ulemas, leading him at times to conduct classes in his home. The tensions only became worse with his appointment as rector. He died within four years. Copied by Sharaf Aldeen Al-Qazani Al-Bulgari in 1296 AH