15th-century manuscript reveals links between Ireland and Islamic world

A previously undiscovered 15th-century Irish vellum manuscript, reveals a connection between Gaelic Ireland and the Muslim world and indicates that medieval.

 

A previously undiscovered 15th-century Irish vellum manuscript, reveals a connection between Gaelic Ireland and the Muslim world and indicates that medieval.

UCC Professor of Modern Irish, Pádraig Ó Macháin, was made aware of an early printed book in the possession of a family in Cornwall, with a connection to medieval Irish learning.

The book, a pocket-sized Latin manual of local administration, was printed in London in 1534/1536, and had been in the family’s possession since that time.

This consisted of a sheet, full of text in Irish, cut from a 15th-century Irish vellum manuscript, that had been trimmed and folded and stitched to the spine of the printed book in order to form a sturdy binding.

It is a fragment of a translation into Irish – previously unrecorded – of the ‘Canon of Medicine’ by the Persian physician Ibn Sena (980–1037), also known as Avicenna, considered one of the most significant physicians in the Islamic Golden Age.