Avicenna's Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure/Healing): The Manuscripts Preserved in Turkey and Their Significance

The article deals with the manuscript dissemination of Avicenna’s (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428H/1037) philosophical masterpiece, the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure/Healing), with particular regard to its metaphysical section (Ilāhiyyāt, Science of Divine Things). On the background of a comprehensive overview of the amount and diffusion of codices of the Šifāʾ, their chronology, their copyists, owners, and places of copy, and their formats, based on the most recent data made available by current research in the field, the article argues that manuscripts preserved in Turkey are testimonia of Avicenna’s work of fundamental importance in different respects: in terms of number, since Turkey is the second largest repository of manuscripts of the Šifāʾ after Iran, and Istanbul the second city after Tehran for concentration of codices; for the relevant information they provide on copyists, owners, and places of copy; in terms of chronology, since they belong to a crucial phase of the transmission history of this work; and on account of their comprehensiveness, since they often display – among other types of extent – a format which is rarely attested elsewhere, i.e. they encompass, in a single volume, the work in its entirety.