On some day in Jumāda II 848 of the Islamic calendar, September or October 1444 of the Common Era, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥājj Ḥasan, who described himself as ‘the copyist’, finished his work on a manuscript of 220 pages.

One day in April, on April 14th 1879, to be precise, an Algerian man by the name of Ḥassan ben Brimaht (in Arabic spelling: Brīhmāt) sent a gift to a friend. The recipient was the French Orientalist Charles Auguste Cherbonneau (1813-1882).

Zayn al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Fākihī al-Makkī, author of a book on hunting and fighting, was born at the eve of a war that was going to change the political landscape of the Middle East profoundly.

The Arabic manuscript catalogued in Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale with the number 2832 is in many ways representative of the history of Arabic falconry literature. The codex was written in the year 923 of the Islamic calendar, 1517 of the Common Era.

One of the most famous authors to write in Arabic about falconry was Usāma ibn Munqidh (1095-1188), a Syrian nobleman whose remarkable memoirs have survived in a single manuscript to the present day.

The manuscript catalogued as Huntington 348 in Oxford’s Bodleian Library documents that the career of texts in premodern societies with traditions of handwritten books was marked by different circumstances.