The text transcribed on this manuscript folio was originally written in the 10th century by Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī, a Hanafi legal scholar and Sufi sage from the Turkic region in Central Asia known as Transoxania. The text was copied onto this folio about 1350 A.D. for the royal library of the Mamluk sultan, as indicated by the gold text at the bottom of the page. The text written diagonally further up the page indicates that the manuscript was later transferred to the Ottomans. Although it is unknown when exactly this folio was excised from its original manuscript, it is likely that it was removed in the nineteenth century when single folios from Islamic manuscripts became popular objects on the art market in the United States and Europe. The MFA acquired this folio in 1929 when Egyptologist, Elizabeth Titzel Riefstahl (1889-1986), sold it to the Museum together with more than 80 other Islamic works on paper. She likely acquired it while living in Istanbul in the 1920s. This object's long history and heavy use is indicated by the edges which, today, appear worn and brown.

---