Title: Free Will and Acts of Faith

Description

This manuscript is a philosophical-religious work with citations from the Qur’an. The text of this copy dating from the early 19th century is written in a very small and poor quality Nasta’liq script with black ink on thin yellowish paper. This style of Perso-Arabic script was the predominant style of Persian calligraphy in the 14th and 15th centuries and was very popular with Ottoman calligraphers. The manuscript is bound with ten other works dealing with grammar, rhetoric, and other subjects. It is from the Bašagić Collection of Islamic Manuscripts in the University Library of Bratislava, Slovakia, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List Memory of the World register in 1997. Safvet beg Bašagić (1870-1934) was a Bosnian scholar, poet, journalist, and museum director, who assembled a collection of 284 manuscript volumes and 365 print volumes, which reflect the development of Islamic civilization from its inception to the early 20th century. The manuscript is item 412 in Jozef Blaškovič, Arabské, turecké a perzské rukopisy Univerzitnej knižnice v Bratislave (Arab, Turkish, and Persian manuscripts in the University Library, Bratislava). The manuscripts bound with this one are items 290, 370, 318, 365, 280, 281, 388, 289, and 282.