The “Canon” was originally written in Arabic by Ibn Sina (980-1037), the great Muslim philosopher-physician better known to the European world as Avicenna. The book is a Hebrew translation of a medieval best-seller known simply as the “Canon ,” a 12th-century medical encyclopedia blending the theories of Galen with the philosophy of Aristotle – a potent blend in the High Middle Ages. The real answer, of course, is far more complex, for what people are really asking is not how the Library of Congress acquired the book but rather: what lands did it traverse as it made its journey through the centuries, and how on earth did it survive the expulsions, the pogroms, the wars, the Holocaust, to reach the Library of Congress? Whose eyes read the book through the generations, whose hands smoothed the leather binding – and who scribbled those comments there in the margins? That is what people are really trying to ask as they gaze down at the ancient object in front of them, and this is the tangle of questions we will now try to address. Schiff (1847-1920), became the basis for the Library’s nascent Hebraic Section in 1912.īut that is the short answer. The short answer, of course, is that it entered the Library of Congress as part of the “ Deinard Collection,” Deinard being Ephraim Deinard (1846-1930), that nigh legendary book-seller who traveled the world in search of the rare and unusual, and whose collections, thanks to the generosity of Jewish philanthropist Jacob H. Its envelope-style binding, common to works in the Muslim world, is highly unusual in the world of Hebrew books, and though not the oldest item here in the Hebraic Section, it is the one book that always makes visitors draw in their breath and ask wonderingly: “How did it get here?” African and Middle Eastern Division.The book is bound in dark brown leather over wooden boards, its tooled surface rubbed smooth with age.
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