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Show <r: ^/<r\j April 6, 1964 Professor E. A. Lowe The Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, New Jersey Dear Professor Lowe It was a great pleasure to have your good letter of March 31. Of course I have the full Catalogue Raisonne' of the Sinai Arabic manuscripts which I did compile about ten years ago and hope some day to have enough leisure to see it published. In the meantime, I managed to produce a summary hand-list of the manuscripts which I microfilmed for the Library of Congress. I am sure you have in your Institute library as well as Princeton University that volume entitled "The Arabic Manuscripts of Mount Sinai" (Johns Hopkins University Press 1955) which includes a brief account of your ms. no. 455. Clark*s Checklist Is really based on my aforementioned work, and you can have that as. in microfilm from the Photoduplicetlon Service of the Congress Library at a modest cost. It may be more helpful to see the reproduction of the fly leaves and compare them with those of Sinai Greek 567. My own interest at the time was the listing of the contents of the Arabic text with in clplts and explicits. though I noted the enforcement of the volume with the Latin fly leaves. The subject of the Arabic codex is homiletics, hagiography and Old Testament books. What is interesting is that the MS. was dedicated to the monastery by a certain Musa ibn Khalil lbn Nassar on 15 Rabi I 601 A.H./ 1204 A.D. On palaeographical grounds, supported by that date, I have dated the manuscript circa 12th century, which seems to confirm your supposition about the Latin Psalter. The earliest known ancient rag-paper is perhaps "Inv. Chart. Ar. 7161" in the Vienna Collection bearing dates 180-200 A.H./796-816 A.D. As you know the introduction of paper making came from China through Chinese war captives who had been paper-makers and were seized by Ziad ibn Salih governor of Samarqand in the year 133 A.H./751 A.D. The last known dated Arabic papyrus bears the year 480 A.H./1087 A.D. in the Manchester Collection (Catalogue of Arabic Papyri in the John Rylands Llbrary-X-no. 10, line 10, p. 16). I hope thase notes answer your questions satisfactorily. Please let me know if I can be of any further service. Regarding your gracious question as to when shall I render another visit to the Institute, it Is only normal that I should aspire for a return at least to finish the two |