ONLY AND RARE EDITION OF WELSCH'S, Commentarius in Ruzname Naurus, Augsburg 1676.

GEORG HIERONYMUS WELSCH [VELSCH] (1624-1677). Commentarius in Ruzname Naurus sive Tabulae aequinoctiales novi Persarum & Turcarum anni. Nunc primum editae, Augsburg, Gottlieb Göbel for Johann Schönig, 1676.

4to (195 x 160 mm). (14), 137, (19) pp. Engraved frontispiece by Georg Waldreich after Heinrich Schoenfeld (title in Arabic), 16 engraved plates and 6 engraved plates by Melchior Haffner.
Contemporary half vellum (some minor wear), spine made of used manuscript. Small spot on second leaf.

FIRST AND ONLY EDITION of this first facsimile of an oriental manuscript at all, being a manuscript of the Ruzname Naurus, the Persian perpetual calendar, attributed today to the 9th-century Persian mathematician Abu'l-Wafâ Al-Buzjâni (see DSB I, p.39). The fact that the commentary on the calendar is in Turkish may be the cause of the common misattribution to a Turkish sheikh of similar name.
The frontispiece represents two Ottoman astronomers, six plates illustrate globes, astrolabes, and alphabets, while the other 16 reproduce the manuscript, placing the text within an exotic floral frame.

Having studied the sciences in Italy between 1645 and 1648, Georg Hieronymus Welsch, a German physician and scholar, returned to Augsburg to devote himself to the study of oriental science. Using a manuscript Persian perpetual calendar acquired from Christoph Weikmann's Kunstkammer in Ulm, he drew up this study in Latin, Ottoman Turkish and a whole range of languages, the text providing an introduction to Turkish astronomy, as well as a painstaking study of the manuscript itself.

VD17 39:124599N; Schnurer, Bibl. Arab. 465.

See text.