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The Rediscovery of Samuel Lyde's Lost Nuayr Kitb alMashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs)
BELLA TENDLER KRIEGER
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society / FirstView Article / October 2013, pp 1 - 16 DOI: 10.1017/S135618631300059X, Published online: 30 October 2013

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S135618631300059X How to cite this article: BELLA TENDLER KRIEGER The Rediscovery of Samuel Lyde's Lost Nuayr Kitb al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Available on CJO 2013 doi:10.1017/ S135618631300059X Request Permissions : Click here

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The Rediscovery of Samuel Lydes Lost Nus Kit ab . ayr al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs)

BELLA TENDLER KRIEGER

Abstract The K. al-Mashyakha is a manual for Nus shaykhs. Its signicance as a window into the otherwise . ayr secret world of Nus ayr ritual was augmented by the role it played in the formation of Nus studies: in . . ayr 1860, it served as the basis for the rst monograph on the Nus ayr religion, Samuel Lydes posthumously . published Asian Mystery. However, for over 150 years, the K. al-Mashyakha has been missing. This article announces its rediscovery in two identical manuscripts and identies two additional works based on this text, the well-known Nus catechism, K. Tal m diy anat al-nus .ayriyya, and the recently . ayr published K. al-Mashyakha issued by the Lebanese press, D ar li-ajl al-marifa. In solving the mystery of its disappearance and rediscovery in two copies, this article provides new insight into the nineteenthcentury Nus world from which the K. al-Mashyakha emerged, as well as that of the European . ayr orientalists who pioneered this eld.

The dogma of religious secrecy, famously observed by members of the Nus religion, .ayr has traditionally made it difcult for western scholars wishing to study the faith to obtain primary sources. Like many esoteric and gnostic groups before them, Nus s believe that .ayr religious knowledge must be hidden from the masses and only be revealed to the worthy after a rigorous process of initiation involving many stages. According to this doctrine, the disclosure of religious truths to outsiders is one of the most fundamental crimes a believer can commit and new members are made to swear not to transgress this law. It is therefore not surprising that as much misinformation as accurate detail can be found in the reports of the pre-modern Islamic heresiographers who rst described the Nus .ayr religion. In their accounts, rumour, polemical slander and surprisingly precise detail are so seamlessly interwoven that it is often difcult to distinguish fact from speculation. Since the
Acknowledgements: Many have helped in the researching of this project and in the acquisition of manuscripts. I would like to specically acknowledge Frances Willmoth at the Old Library, Jesus College, Cambridge, Elizabeth Gow at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, Marie-Genevi` eve Guesdon at the Biblioth` eque Nationale de France, and Kenneth Dunn at National Library of Scotland. I would like to additionally thank Nicolas Barker at the Rare Books School for his advice on the Bibliotheca Lindesiana and Ron Naiweld and Udi Engelsman for their help obtaining manuscripts. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Meir Michael Bar-Asher, Luke Yarbrough, and my doctoral advisors Michael Cook and Patricia Crone for their invaluable comments on several versions of this paper.

JRAS, Series 3, page 1 of 16 doi:10.1017/S135618631300059X

The Royal Asiatic Society 2013

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nineteenth century, disentangling this web has been the project of several western scholars who have sought to describe this religion more accurately by analysing actual Nus works .ayr of literature. This endeavour has proceeded piecemeal as each new Nus manuscript to .ayr fall into the hands of western scholars has lled out another element of the picture and, often, even overturned previously held assumptions. Thus from its inception, the western study of the Nus religion has been intimately tied .ayr to the search for sources. This began in the nineteenth century when European travellers and missionaries rst became aware of the Islamic sectaries living in the mountains of northern Syria and sought to collect any books of theirs they could nd. The earliest scholarly articles were often simply descriptions of new Nus manuscripts, and it is these same .ayr manuscripts, now housed in major libraries of western Europe, which remain our primary sources of information on the Nus religion. .ayr In view of the scarcity of sources, the loss of a Nus manuscript can be disastrous. Many .ayr of the most important and interesting works are only known from single copies. This was the case with the K. al-Mashyakha, a manual for Nus shaykhs, which has been missing .ayr for over 150 years. The intrinsic value of this work as a window onto the otherwise secret world of Nus ceremonies was augmented by the historical role it played in the formation .ayr of Nus studies. In 1860 the K. al-Mashyakha served as the basis for the rst book-length .ayr monograph on the Nus religion. This book, The Asian Mystery Illustrated in the History, .ayr Religion and Present State of the Ansaireeh or Nusairis of Syria, was written by the Reverend Samuel Lyde, an Anglican missionary who worked among the Nus s in Latakia. It was .ayr thus a major misfortune, often deplored, that Lyde was the last-known scholar to inspect this manuscript, and in the century and a half following the publication of his book this manuscript was regarded as missing. The K. al-Mashyakha in Lydes possession was quite distinctive. From the descriptions Lyde provided in his Asian Mystery we know that it consisted of 188 pages 12mo and was divided into 32 chapters.1 We also know that although Lyde called his entire manuscript the K. al-Mashyakha, the document in fact comprised an original book bearing this title and three further texts, probably appended by the copyist. These additional texts were written by the same copyist but in a worse hand, and in his closing remarks he excused himself for this, blaming the poor quality of his ink. The K. al-Mashyakha proper was a prayer manual. Of the appended texts, the rst two related to initiation and the third was a sermon on the proper behaviour of believers during religious gatherings. Reecting this division in the manuscript between the K. al-Mashyakha on the one hand and the appended texts on the other, the copyist wrote three colophons, one at the conclusion of the K. al-Mashyakha, another after the appended texts on initiation and then some nal closing remarks after the sermon. In the rst colophon the copyist, a certain Shaykh Muh agh , provides his lineage and the date and occasion of the . ammad of Bishr manuscripts transcription, which Lyde reports was the initiation of his nephew Al b. Id in 2 1239/1824. In the second colophon the copyist attributes the appended texts on initiation
1 Samual 2 Ibid.,

Lyde, The Asian Mystery: The Ansaireeh or Nusairis of Syria (London, 1860), p. 233. pp. 233, 256, 264. Lydes statement of the relationship between the scribe and novice is erroneous, as will be explained below.

The Rediscovery of Samuel Lydes Lost Nus Kit ab al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs) . ayr

to a Shaykh H n, and then repeats that the occasion for its transcription was . asan b. Ramad .a 3 the initiation of Al b. Id. One can assume that it was this milestone in his relatives life that led the copyist Muh agh to append the chapters on initiation to the original . ammad of Bishr text of the K. al-Mashyakha. In the concluding remarks following the sermon, the copyist repeats the occasion of transcription and apologises for the bad handwriting in which the manuscript was written, blaming it on the poor quality of the ink.4 Lyde was not the rst scholar to inspect the K. al-Mashyakha. Earlier mention of it appeared in the July 1848 issue of the Journal Asiatique in a letter written by the SyrianChristian, Joseph Catafago on 26 June 1848. At the time Catafago was employed as the ofcial interpreter of the Prussian consulate in Beirut but had acquired a reputation among European orientalists by publishing notices from time to time in the scholarly periodicals of new Nus manuscripts that had come into his possession. In fact, only a few months earlier, .ayr in February 1848, Catafago had published the rst description of al-T an s Majm u al. abar Ay ad [Collection of Feasts] that to this day is considered one of the most important Nus .ayr treatises to have been brought to light.5 Amid the celebration over his article Catafago wrote a short letter in which he thanked his learned colleagues for their response to his discovery and then described another work he had found which he claimed was no less interesting than the Majm u al-Ay ad and which he intended to translate and publish forthwith.6 The title of the work was K. al-Mashyakha, and from his list of the subject headings it is clear that it contained the same subject matter as the book later known to Samuel Lyde. Catafago never got around to publishing his intended translation of the K. al-Mashyakha and did not include the book in his 1876 bibliography of Nus texts.7 .ayr Twelve years later, in 1860, the K. al-Mashyakha resurfaced in Samuel Lydes Asian Mystery, which, as mentioned above, was the rst book-length monograph to be written about the Nus s. Of all the European scholars to write about the Nus s, Samuel Lyde had perhaps .ayr .ayr the greatest rst-hand experience with the sect. From 1852 to his death in 1860 he served as the rst Anglican missionary to the Nus s.8 As the only European to live among them, he .ayr
p. 264. pp. 233, 264. 5 Joseph Catafago, Notice sur les Ans eriens, Journal Asiatique February (1848), pp. 149168. Catafago only published the table of contents and some extracts from the Majm u al-Ay ad in this article. A critical edition of the full text was rst printed a century later in Rudolph Strothmann, Festkalender der Nusairer, Der Islam, XXVII (19441946). In 2006 the Lebanese press D ar li-Ajl al-Marifa published a new edition of the Majm u al-Ay ad in a volume dedicated to the works of al-T an ; see Ab u M us a and al-Shaykh M us a (eds), Ras ail . abar al-H ath al-Alaw 3 (Diy ar Aql, Lebanon, 2006), pp. 207412. A chapter analysing . ikma al-Alawiyya, Silsilat al-tur the antinomian elements of the Majm u al-Ay ad entitled The Nus Calendar: Allegorical and Antinomian .ayr interpretation of Muslim festivals can be found in Meir M. Bar-Asher and Aryeh Kofsky, The Nus -Alaw . ayr Religion: An Enquiry into its Theology and Liturgy (Leiden, 2002), pp. 111151. 6 Joseph Catafago, Lettre de M. Catafago, Journal Asiatique, July (1848) pp. 7278. 7 Idem, Nouvelles M elanges, Journal Asiatique, July (1876), pp. 523525. Although this article has been used as a catalogue of all available Nus works, it was not actually intended as such. It was merely a description of .ayr a particular collection Catafago had occasion to examine on a recent trip to Syria. Catafago describes it as a collection, the likes of which does not exist in any part of the world that includes almost all of the rare and little-known books of the Nus religion. This particular collection apparently lacked a K. al-Mashyakha, which .ayr is why this title was excluded from the list. 8 Lyde ran a mission school in the village of Bhamra, several miles east of Latakia, which he later bequeathed to R. J. Dodds and J. Beattie of the American Reformed Presbyterian Church. (See Evangelical Christendom [the magazine of the World Evangelical Alliance] XVI (1875), p. 189). This mission was hardly the only one active among the Nus s in the nineteenth century. Various western churches and the H . anate Ottoman state competed .ayr
4 Ibid., 3 Ibid.,

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was uniquely well placed to study the community from within. It was his hope eventually to write a scholarly monograph on their religious beliefs based on a large collection of original manuscripts that would do for the Ansaireeh what De Sacy has already effected for [our understanding of] the Druses.9 Unfortunately, his worsening health forced him to moderate his ambition. Knowing that he did not have long to live, he began to write his book after having examined only one original Nus manuscript, the K. al-Mashyakha, which along .ayr with his personal experiences among the sect, oral reports from Nus acquaintances and .ayr the few articles available at the time, comprised the entirety of his information on the Nus .ayr religion. In the preface to his Asian Mystery Lyde writes that he had acquired his copy of the K. al-Mashyakha from a Christian merchant in Ladikeeh for the sum of 10, having come into his hands during the troublesome times of Ibrahim Pasha, when the Ansaireeh were driven from their homes.10 The unrest surrounding Ibrahim Pashas invasion of Syria occurred in the 1830s,11 and if the merchants report is to be trusted, one must assume that the manuscript had been in the latters possession ever since. How then was Catafago able to describe the manuscript in 1848? Lyde, who recognised the identity of his text with that previously described by Catafago, suggests that the self-same merchant might have lent the K. al-Mashyakha to Catafago, but that Catafago never actually owned the manuscript.12 He could have transcribed the manuscript however, and in fact, he probably did, as we will later learn. Lyde died in Alexandria on 1 April 1860 at the age of 35, just after completing his draft of the Asian Mystery. Time had not allowed him the opportunity to expand on his footnotes or to settle his affairs. It was only through the dedication of his brother that the book was published later that year in London by Lomgmans and Green and made available to the general public. For a long time, at least until 1900 when Ren e Dussaud wrote his Histoire et religion des Nos air s , Lydes work, and by extension the K. al-Mashyakha , remained . 13 the main source of information on the Nus religion. Unfortunately, no one knew .ayr
with each other for Nus converts. See Douwes, Dick. Knowledge and Oppression; the Nus .ayr .ayriyya in the Late Ottoman Period, in Convegno Sul Tema: La Sh a Nellimpero Ottomano, (Rome, 1993) pp. 150169; Selim Deringil, The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, Comparative Studies in Society and History XXXV, no. 1 (1993), pp. 329; Yvette Talhamy, American Protestant Missionary Activity among the Nusayris (Alawis) in Syria in the Nineteenth Century. Middle East Studies XLVII, no. 2 (2011), pp. 215236; Necati Alkan, Fighting for the Nus Soul: State, Protestant Missionaries and the Alaw s in the Late Ottoman .ayr Empire. Die Welt des Islams LII (2012), pp. 2350. Lydes historical signicance is not limited to his evangelical and scholarly work. In 1856 he accidentally shot and killed a beggar in Nablus, triggering a large anti-Christian riot. He was later forced to stand trial for the murder, but was acquitted due to inadmissible evidence. See James Finn, Stirring Times: or Records from Jerusalem Consular Chronicles of 18531856. Vol. II. (London, C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1878), pp. 427438. 9 Lyde, Asian Mystery, p. v. The work referred to is Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, Expos e de la religion des druzes, tir e des livres religieux de cette secte, et pr ec ed e dune introduction et de la Vie du khalife Hakem-biamr-Allah, 2 vols. (Paris, LImprimerie royale, 1838). 10 Lyde, Asian Mystery, p. vii. 11 On this period in Nusayr . history see Stefan Winter, La revolte Alaouite de 1834 contre loccupation Egyptienne: perception Alaouites et lecture Ottomane, Oriente Moderno LXXIX, 3 (1999), pp. 6171; Yvette Talhamy, Conscription among the Nusayris (Alawis) in the Nineteenth Century, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies XXXVIII, 1 (2011), pp. 2340. 12 Lyde, Asian Mystery, p. vii. 13 See Ren e Dussaud, Histoire et Religion des Nos s. (Paris, Librairie Emile Bouillon, 1900). This work did . air not employ Lydes text and was instead based on Sulaym an al-Adhan s K. al-B ak ura al-sulaym aniyya f kashf asr ar

The Rediscovery of Samuel Lydes Lost Nus Kit ab al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs) . ayr

what had become of Lydes manuscript, and while generations of scholars acknowledged the importance of his text for elucidating the ways in which the secret Nus rituals were .ayr conducted, the fact that only excerpts from the K. al-Mashyakha appeared to have been preserved, and these only in translation, precluded a proper analysis of the text. The loss of this manuscript was lamented most recently in the works of Meir Bar-Asher and Arieh Kofsky, and in that of Yaron Friedman.14 Yet Lydes manuscript is still extant. It is available in the Old Library of Jesus College, Cambridge, where it has been housed since 1 March 1860. It seems that foreseeing his imminent demise, Lyde sent the manuscript, as well as several other Arabic texts, to Jesus College, Cambridge. In the 1922 Supplementary Hand-List of manuscripts held at Cambridge University, Lydes K. al-Mashyakha is given the shelf mark MS Cambridge 1422 Jesus, No. 17 and described as a Manual of Nusayri Shaykhs bought in Sept. 1859 for 10 from a merchant of Latakia, and bequeathed to Jesus College by S. Lyde on 1 March 1860. It comprises 32 sections and 188 pages. The substance of the book is incorporated in Lydes Asian Mystery, Ch. ix, published in 1860 by Longmans and Green.15 It is not surprising that Lyde would have donated his manuscript to Jesus College. Before moving to Syria in 1852, his entire adult life had been spent at that institution. According to the Alumni Cantabrigienses, Lyde was admitted to Jesus College at the age of 18 on 9 April 1842. He matriculated the following year, completing a BA in 1848 and an MA three years later, at which point he took holy orders, and was hired as a fellow of Jesus College in 1851.16 It was only his worsening health that led him to seek employment in 1852 in the warmer clime of Syria, where he established his mission house and eventually acquired

al-diy ana al-nus is known to have converted to Sunn .ayrism, al-Adhan . ayriyya (Beirut, 1863). An apostate from Nus Islam, Greek Orthodoxy, Judaism, and then Protestantism (of the Associate Reformed Church), before publishing this expos e of the Nus religion in the hope of promoting the Protestant cause among his former coreligionists. .ayr It is conventionally assumed that the Nus s murdered al-Adhan for revealing their secrets, although there are .ayr conicting reports as to how he met his demise. (Live burial, burning, and strangulation are some suggestions: see Henry H. Jessup, The Women of the Arabs. (New York, Dodd and Mead, 1873), p. vii; Muh alib al-T l, . ammad Gh . aw T ar kh al-Alawiyy n. second ed. (Beirut, D ar al-Andalus, 1966), p. 448; Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat Sects, (Syracuse, 1988) pp. 260, 503.) Jessup provides the only death date I have been able to nd as 1871. It should be noted that al-Adhan did not die a Protestant, as generally supposed. Several letters written by Jessup between the years 1862 and 1865 and published in The Missionary Herald, the annual newsletter of the Associate Reform Church, mention al-Adhan by name and provide important new details about his life, conversion, and works. Signicantly, they mention that a year after the publication of his book, in 1864, he defected from the Protestant Church and reverted to Greek Orthodoxy in order to marry the daughter of a Greek priest in Latakia. They also mention that in 1865 he wrote a second book denouncing Protestantism and promoting Greek Orthodoxy. While I have not yet located this second polemic, it is obvious that al-Adhan s story is also far from told. (See Kamal Salibi and Yusuf K. Khoury, eds., The Missionary Herald: Reports from Ottoman Syria, 18191870, vol. V (Amman, 1995), pp. 5961, 87, 97, 117. Also see Samer Traboulsis forthcoming article The American Missionaries and the Nus s: The Case .ayr of Sulaym an al-Adhan in AUB: A Century and a Half which promises to deal with al-Adhan s life). 14 Bar-Asher and Kofsky, Nusayr Religion, p. 165; Yaron Friedman, The Nus -Alaw s: an Introduction . -Alaw . ayr to the Religion, History, and Identity of the Leading Minority in Syria (Leiden, 2010), p. 271. 15 Edward G. Brown, A Supplementary Hand-List of the Muhammadan Manuscripts, Including all Those Written in . the Arabic Character, Preserved in the Libraries of the University and Colleges of Cambridge, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1922), pp. 237, 309. This information can also be found at the conclusion of the actual MS in a dedicatory inscription written by Samuel Lyde that reads: March 1, 1860. I bequeath this book to Jesus College Cambridge. Samuel Lyde. Coll. Jesus Cantab: Socius. An anonymous notice follows this inscription: M. Lyde died in Alexandria on the 1st April 1860. The substance of this manual is translated in M. Lydes book entitled the Asian Mystery Chap IX. The page is not numbered but it would correspond to p. 190 in the MS. 16 J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of all Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Ofce at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900, Part 2, vol. IV (Cambridge, 1951), p. 243.

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his manuscript. Lydes afliation with Jesus College has always been known. In fact, it is announced on the title page of his Asian Mystery where he is styled the Rev. Samuel Lyde, M.A.; fellow of Jesus College: Author of The Ansyreeh and Ismaeleeh.17 But nowhere in the book is it mentioned that he had sent his manuscript to his old college, which may be why no one thought to look there. An examination of the manuscript reveals additional information regarding its provenance that Lyde did not mention. Signicantly, it allows identication of some of the names associated with this manuscript. First among these is the novice in whose honour the K. al-Mashyakha was copied. Lyde had simply referred to him as Al b. Id, but in the 18 manuscript his name is given in greater detail as Al b. al-shaykh Id b. al-shaykh Ah . mad. From this fuller lineage, he is identiable as the Nus shaykh Al b. Id b. Ah . mad b. .ayr 19 His nisba is listed Mus t af a , born in Bishr a gh , a town near Jablah in Latakia, in 1217 / 1802 . .. as Bishr agh Mah riz , i.e. of the Mah a riza, a Nus ayr clan living in the area of S a t a who . . . 20 claimed Hashimite descent through the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt. According to an internal tradition, the Mah , a rizas name and royal pedigree derive from a certain Mah .a . riz al-Jaysh Fatimid am r, said to be a grandson of the Caliph al- Muizz, who migrated with his family arigha, to whom our novice belonged, were to Syria in the fourth/tenth century.21 The Bash a lineage within this clan based in Bishr agh . Fortuitously, there is quite a large amount of information about the Mah riza, and .a particularly the family of Al b. Id around the time that the K. al-Mashyakha was copied. This is because of the existence of a rare biographical dictionary, the K. al-Nasab, written by usuf, who was orphaned Y usuf b. Al al-Araj (b.1275/1858) of a related Nus family.22 Y .ayr as a child, came to Bishr agh at the age of 17 to live with and probably be initiated by Abd usuf al-Ar aj pays particular attention al-H d the son of Al b. Id.23 In his K. al-Nasab, Y . am to the family of his shaykh, which is why any details of the life of this provincial gure have survived.
17 This title refers to Lydes travelogue of his original journey to Latakia in 1852: Samual Lyde, The Ansyreeh and Ismaeleeh: a Visit to the Secret Sects of Northern Syria; with a View towards the Establishment of Schools (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1853). 18 MS Lyde 17, (Cambridge: Old Library, Jesus College), p. 106. 19 D b Al H am min al-madhhab al-jafari al-alawi, 3 vols. (Damascus, 1997), I pp. 75, 77, 106. This . asan, Al birth date would have made him 22, which is quite old, at his initiation in 1239/1824, when the K. al-Mashyakha was copied. Initiation generally occurs between the ages of 16 and 18. I wonder if the rasm referred to in the manuscript is not initiation but a more advanced ceremony, celebrating a mans consecration as a shaykh. I have not found any descriptions of such a ceremony, but it would explain both the advanced age of the novice and the transcription of a K. al-Mashyakha for the occasion. It is intended for shaykhs and certainly would not have been presented to a newly initiated youth. 20 See al-Taw ar kh al-alawiyy n, pp. 410, 430433. See also Gizela Proch azka-Eisl and Stephen Proch azka, . l, T The Plain of Saints and Prophets: the Nusayri-Alawi Community of Cilicia (Southern Turkey) and its Sacred Places (Wiesbaden, 2010), p. 53. 21 See t majh lih Is a Ab u Al ush, S ula min thawrat al-shaykh . sa (Latakia: D ar Dh u al-Fiq ar lil-T a a . ib .a . al-al . afah wa-al-Nashr wal-Tawz , 2006), p. 14. Elsewhere, the one to emigrate from Egypt is Mah u Abd All ah . rizs son, Ab Muh ; see K amil Al Ibr ah m Bays n, H aiq al-taby n f nasab al-muslim n al-alawiyy n . ammad b. Mah . riz al-Jaysh . aq . (Beirut, 2006), pp. 225228. For an analysis of the (likely spurious) Mah claim to Fatimid descent see H . riz . asan, Al am, II, pp. 5659. Another derivation for the name of the Mah ah riza clan from a certain Mah .a . riz b. Abd All al-Ans can be found in some of the entries in D b Al H b. d. I r . asans biographical dictionary, including that of Al .a (H am, I, p. 75.) I have not been able to identify this man and wonder if the inclusion of the name might . asan, Al r. be an attempt to bolster the Islamic legitimacy of the sect by tracing their origin to the ans .a 22 This work is not published but is the major source of information for D b Al H am. . asans Al 23 Hasan, Al am, I, pp. 105106. .

The Rediscovery of Samuel Lydes Lost Nus Kit ab al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs) . ayr

An inspection of MS Lyde 17 also reveals additional information about the scribe Muh agh . In the manuscript his full name is given as Muh . ammad of Bishr . ammad b. alshaykh [sic] b. al-shaykh J abir b. al-shaykh Juma from the town of the people of Bishr agh 24 al-Jir ana who is descended from the shaykh Farr as al-H amm a m (the Lion of al-H amm a m). . . The expression ibn al-shaykh is written twice in a row which can either be understood as an accidental repetition, in which case the scribes name is simply Muh abir b. Juma, . ammad b. J or as an accidental omission of the fathers name from the lineage. The latter is in fact the case, for in Y usuf al-Arajs K. al-Nasab there is mention of a certain Juma b. Muh . ammad b. Al b. J abir b. Juma who was born in Bishr agh in 1220/1805 and who is thus likely to as be the copyists son.25 Moreover, this Juma is reported to descend from the shaykh Farr al-Jir ana (the Lion of al-Jir ana), and our copyist Muh agh , traced his lineage . ammad of Bishr in the manuscript to the shaykh Farr as al-H am. Al-H am and al-Jir ana are the same . amm . amm location, the present day H amm a m al-Qar a h ila, a town adjacent to Bishr a gh .26 The fact . . that both men claim descent from this shaykh conrms their relationship and allows us to denitively state that the scribes name was Muh , even though this patronymic . ammad b. Al does not appear in the manuscript. In terms of the relationship between the scribe and the novice, it should be noted that according to the manuscript Al b. Id was not the nephew of Muh , as . ammad of Bishragh Lyde claimed but rather his paternal cousin. The terms used in the manuscript are ibn amm and walad amm, which literally mean son of the paternal uncle, or paternal cousin.27 It is not clear why Lyde chose to translate the term as nephew, especially considering that he translated it as cousin in the case of the author of the chapters on initiation, Shaykh H . asan b. Ramad z, the dear paternal cousin.28 n, whom the scribe describes as ibn al-amm al-az .a From their lineages, we know that the scribe and novice were not biological rst cousins but may have been more distant relatives. Alternatively, Muh agh may simply . ammad of Bishr have used the expression ibn amm as a gurative endearment for a friend or co-religionist. One might also suggest that the term was employed here in its technical sense relating to Nus initiation. In nineteenth-century Nus literature the initiating shaykh in the .ayr .ayr masterdisciple relationship was often called a amm.29 So it is possible that when Muh . ammad of Bishr agh wrote that he transcribed the K. al-Mashyakha in honour of the consecration of his ibn al-amm Al b. Id, he meant that he copied it in honour of the initiation of his own masters son. Further biographical information for these men will be required to settle this ambiguity. The last point relating to the provenance of the K. al-Mashyakha that Lyde did not mention is that there is a short note written on one of the blank leaves following the manuscript.30
Lyde 17, p. 156. Al am, I, p. 38. . 26 In fact, this town is often referred to by both names as al-Hamm am al-Jir ana. See ibid., pp. 27, 38, 63, 80, . 104. See also al-T l, T ar kh al-Alaw y n, p. 529. In one instance this shaykh is referred to by both names as Farr as . aw al-H am al-Jir ana. See H am, I, p. 104. . amm . asan, Al 27 MS Lyde 17, pp. 178, 188. 28 Ibid., p. 178. 29 See, for example, al-Adhan , K. al-B ak ura, pp. 2,7, translated in Edward Salisbury, The Book of Sulaymans First Ripe Fruit disclosing the mysteries of the Nosairian religion, Journal of the American Oriental Society, VIII (1864), pp. 229, 233. 30 The page is not numbered but would correspond to MS Lyde 17, p. 190.
25 Hasan, 24 MS

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Due to its colloquialisms and scrawling script, the note is very hard to read but likely contains important information relating to the history of the text. The legible portions refer to a ceremony attended by an uncle Id (possibly the father of the novice Al b. Id), witnessed by one Muhann a b. Ab ud and one Aj b b. Ayy ub, during which a half measurement of wheat kernels were donated as endowment (waqf) to the saint al-Khid . r. The handwriting of the note differs from that of Muh agh and is signed by the son of a certain . ammad of Bishr Jah ah a l who claims to have inspected the manuscript. This could be a presentation . j . Ism inscription commemorating the occasion of the gifting of the book, but it is difcult to say whether it is for the initial presentation or some later transfer of the ownership of the text. The story of Lydes manuscript, so neatly resolved by the notice in the Cambridge catalogue, does not however end there for, if previously we had a missing manuscript, now we have two extant ones: there is a second copy of Muh agh s K. al. ammad of Bishr Mashyakha in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, where it has been housed since 1901. This manuscript was examined by scholars in the eld but was never positively identied with Lydes lost text. In the 1934 catalogue of Arabic manuscripts of the John Rylands Library it is labelled MS 124 and given the provisional title The Liturgy and Prayer book of the Nus s.31 The description is extremely detailed and even includes the Arabic text of .air the colophon which says, in agreement with Lydes own introduction, that the Mashyakha was completed in 1239/1823 [4] by Muh agh in honour of the initiation . ammad of Bishr of Al b. Id. The same texts are appended, along with the closing remarks in which the copyist credits his chapters on initiation to the teachings of H n and blames . asan b. Ramad .a his bad handwriting on the quality of his ink. The colophon, closing remarks and subject headings sufce to identify MS 124 as identical to that in Lydes possession. In fact, had I not discovered Lydes manuscript in Jesus College, Cambridge, I would simply have presumed this document to be Lydes lost text. How are we to account for this copy? A book of the signicance of the K. al-Mashyakha might well have existed in several copies, but the fact that Jesus 17 and Manchester 124 have identical colophons is strange. In theory, colophons are unique. They are the personal autographs in which the copyist provides his name and the completion date of his particular transcription. How then did these two copies come to have the same colophon? Which of the two manuscripts is the original? And how did Manchester 124 also manage to make it to Great Britain and elude recognition as the lost K. al-Mashyakha? The answer to the question of their relative chronology emerges from a comparison of the two texts. While internally identical, the Cambridge and Manchester manuscripts display several extrinsic differences. The most obvious is that the Manchester manuscript is written with fteen lines per page while Lydes has only eleven, so that Lydes text has many more pages than Manchester 124: 94 fols (188 pp.) as opposed to the 62 fols of the Manchester text. In Lydes manuscript, moreover, each appended text begins on a new page, whereas in the Manchester MS one proceeds directly into the other. Both features could reect a desire to save paper, but the second could also indicate that Lyde 17 was the original in which each appendix was still seen as a distinct text, while in Manchester 124 the entire
31 A. Mingana, Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library Manchester (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1934), pp. 202204.

The Rediscovery of Samuel Lydes Lost Nus Kit ab al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs) . ayr

content was already perceived as a uniform body of literature. Another telling difference is that Manchester 124 includes an Arabic table of contents that is absent from the Cambridge manuscript.32 Lyde wrote his own English table of contents at the conclusion of his text, but he did not have an Arabic one to work with.33 The lack of an Arabic table of contents reinforces the suspicion that Lydes manuscript is the earlier, less-developed, text. The handwritings of the two manuscripts are not identical but they are quite similar, both being written in a clear Syrian Nashkh script. As Lyde pointed out, in the Cambridge manuscript this script worsens in the last appended text and the copyist apologises for the change with reference to the poor quality of his ink.34 In Manchester 124 the handwriting remains pretty much the same throughout. However, in the paragraph containing the apology the handwriting suddenly worsens and remains obviously bad for the remainder of the manuscript.35 It is as if the copyist of the Manchester manuscript, reading the apology for the poor penmanship in the original, sought to make the statement apply to his copy as well! While none of these differences are conclusive on their own, together they suggest that Lydes text was the earlier of the two. But the most telling indication that Manchester 124 was a later copy is that the scribes lineage in the colophon is written as Muh . ammad b. alshaykh J abir b. al-shaykh Juma.36 As noted above, Lydes text had an additional ibn al-shaykh due to the scribes omission of his fathers name from the lineage.37 Whoever copied the Manchester MS from the original clearly assumed that the second ibn al-shaykh in the name was superuous and left it out. Who might this copyist have been? One suggestion emerges from an examination of the texts arrival at the University of Manchester. Before coming to the John Rylands Library the manuscript was part of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, a private collection of rare books and manuscripts compiled by the British Earls of Crawford. In its time, the Bibliotheca Lindesiana was one of the most important private libraries in Britain. It was begun in the late sixteenth century and was expanded in the nineteenth century by James Ludovic Lindsay, the 26th Earl of Crawford, exactly at the time when interest in Nus .ayrism rst began. In 1901 this entire collection, including the K. al-Mashyakha, was sold to the John Rylands Library in Manchester, where it has remained to this day. An examination of the 1898 catalogue of Oriental manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Lindesiana reveals that while the K. al-Mashyakha was indeed owned by Lord Lindsay, it was incorrectly identied as an Ism a l manuscript, which may be why scholars interested in Nus ayrism never thought to examine it.38 It was labelled MS 722 and given the descriptive . title Ismaili Ritual Sermons and Lists of Saints. No other information regarding its contents was provided in the published catalogue and the only way to identify it as the K. al-Mashyakha
MS 124 [722], (Manchester, John Rylands Library), pp. 61b63b. pages are not numbered but would correspond to MS Lyde 17, pp. 191197. 34 Ibid., p. 188. 35 Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 61a. 36 Ibid., p. 49a. 37 MS Lyde 17, p. 156. 38 James Ludovic Lindsay Earl of Crawford and Michael Kerney, Bibliotheca Lindesiana: Hand-List of Oriental Manuscripts. Arabic. Persian. Turkish (Aberdeen: Priv . Print. Aberdeen University Press, 1898), p. 41. It is possible that this error was due to a misunderstanding of the relationship between Nus s and Ism a l s. Although Lyde .ayr had made the distinction between these two sects quite clear, the two were often conated.
32 Arabic 33 The

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is from its date given as about A.D. 1820 and from its Lindesiana shelf mark, 722, mentioned in the John Rylands catalogue in the entry on the K. al-Mashyakha.39 How did this manuscript arrive at the Bibliotheca Lindesiana? In his 1977 study of the lives and libraries of the Earls of Crawford, Nicolas Barker, a scholar of antiquarian books, writes that Lindsays book buyer, a man by the name of Bernard Quaritch, obtained several manuscripts of the prayers and legends of the Ansairis from a Syrian working as a clerk in the city named Catafago.40 As may be recalled, Joseph Catafago wrote the original notice about the K. al-Mashyakha, which appeared in the Journal Asiatique in July 1848. It seems that sometime between 1853 and 1858 Joseph Catafago left Syria and moved to London, where he occupied himself with the compilation of an Arabic-English dictionary.41 While in London, he made the acquaintance of Bernard Quaritch who, in addition to being Lindsays personal book buyer, was a well-known London-based book dealer and publisher, responsible for many of the nineteenth-century contributions to the eld of oriental studies. In fact, Bernard Quaritch Booksellers published Catafagos Arabic-English dictionary in 1858. In the preface to this work, Catafago attributes the idea for the dictionary to Bernard Quaritch, whom he calls a friend.42 There is, moreover, a record in the form of letters between Catafago and Lord Lindsay that in 1862 Catafago was hired to complete various scribal projects for the library.43 So the link between Joseph Catafago and the Bibliotheca Lindesiana is well documented and there can be no doubt that the same Joseph Catafago who examined the K. al-Mashyakha in Syria in 1848 is the one who sold it to the library after his arrival in London, more precisely in 1858. The invoice is still preserved in the Crawford Muniments, the collection of documents relating to the Bibliotheca Lindesiana now held at the National Library of Scotland. Recorded for 18 February 1858 is the purchase of a
39 The handwritten notes of Michael Kerney, who was the cataloguer of Oriental manuscripts at the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, provide additional information: MS 722, Ismaiil Rituals, Sermons, and Lists of Saints. 62 Leaves clearly written in Naskhi. Written in Syria about 1820. A curious volume which shows singular resemblances to the Druze books. One of the pieces is addressed to Christians and informs them that Christ was not really put to death or crucied. The K . uran and the Bible are freely quoted. There is no intitulation or description to specify the exact sect; but it is plainly the ritual of a faith in which Ali holds a higher place than Muhammad and is treated as a divinity. An inscription at the end says that the book is in the handwriting of our uncles son, the Shaykh Ali, and deprecates any disparagement of the text. It is by implication a sort of presentation-inscription, Michael Kerney, Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts belonging to the Earl of Crawford (unpublished, n.d.) The quotation from the inscription was misunderstood by Kerney. It in fact reads that the book was written in honor of shaykh Al , not by him. I would like to thank Elisabeth Gow, the manuscript curator at the John Rylands Library, where these handwritten notes are now housed, for supplying me with a copy of this entry. 40 Nicolas Barker, Bibliotheca Lindesiana: The Lives and Collections of Alexander William, 25th Earl of Crawford and 8th Earl of Balcarres, and James Ludovic, 26th Earl of Crawford and 9th Earl of Balcarres (London, 1977), p. 209. 41 Joseph Catafago, An English and Arabic Dictionary, in Two Parts, Arabic and English, and English and Arabic: in which the Arabic Words are Represented in the Oriental Character, as well as their Correct Pronunciation and Accentuation Shewn in English Letters (London, Bernard Quaritch, 1858). The dates for Catafagos move to London are taken from the biographical information given on the title page of the dictionary which states the following: Joseph Catafago, of Aleppo in Syria, Secretary to Soliman Pasha (Major-General to the Egyptian Army in Syria), 18391840; rst interpreter and chancellor of the general consulate of Prussia at Beirut, 18421851; secretary of the general consulate of Russia at Beirut, 18511853; corresponding member of the Asiatic Societies of Paris and Leipsic, and of the Syrio-Egyptian society of London; the translator of the Catechism of the Ansaris, presented to H.M. the King of Prussia in 1845, and of other Arabic manuscripts etc. etc. Since Catafagos last listed employment in Beirut was in 1853 and the preface to his dictionary is signed with his residence given as London, 7 Howard Street, Strand, September 1858, one can assume that he moved to London sometime between these dates. 42 Ibid., p. vi. 43 Accession 9769, Library Papers 3: The Crawford Muniments: Letter, 4 March 1862, of Catafago to Lord Lindsay, item no. 40, and Letter, 8 April 1862, of Catafago to Lord Lindsay, item no. 70.

The Rediscovery of Samuel Lydes Lost Nus Kit ab al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs) . ayr

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Nus book, (incorrectly) identied as Hymns of the Ismailis, for 1 as well as a prayer .ayr book of the Ansairis, surely our K. al-Mashyakha, for 3.44 These are the two items later catalogued as MSS 721 and 722 of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana and MSS 123 and 124 of the John Rylands library and, along with the D w an of al-Khas b (MS 655 /452), are the only . 45 works of Nus ayr liturgy in the entire collection. . This takes us back to the problem of how Catafago had obtained a copy of Muh . ammad of Bishr aghis K. al-Mashyakha when we know that Lyde purchased it from a Christian merchant in Latakia in 1859. This can be explained in one of two ways: either Catafago and Lyde each had their own duplicate copies which had been produced while the original manuscript was still among the Nus s, or Catafago personally copied this text when the .ayr merchant who later sold it to Lyde lent it to him, presumably in 1848 when his article about it appeared. The second theory is the more likely as it would better explain the identical colophons. We know from his notice in the Journal Asiatique that Catafago intended to publish a translation of this manuscript. If Lyde was correct in assuming that Catafago had only borrowed the K. al-Mashyakha, it would have made sense for him to make a copy for his personal use. This assumption would also explain why the copyist removed the apparent dittography in the patronymic of Muh agh instead of supplying the missing . ammad of Bishr name, as a Nus copyist would probably have done: Catafago was not familiar with it. .ayr According to this hypothesis, the K. al-Mashyakha housed at the John Rylands Library was not reproduced by a Nus but rather by Joseph Catafago. .ayr There is nothing in the Crawford Muniments to conrm this hypothesis, but it is possible that Catafago did not reveal this information to Quaritch or, if he did, that it was simply not documented. Of course, the alternative suggestion, that Catafago and Lyde had each discovered distinct copies of this manuscript, must also be entertained. In support of this hypothesis is the fact that Catafagos 1848 notice of the K. al-Mashyakha in the Journal Asiatique includes an Arabic table of contents, which exists in Manchester 124 but is absent from Lyde 17. It is impossible to tell for certain, however, if the table in Catafagos article was copied from an actual table of contents in the manuscript or is simply a list of the chapter headings. In other words, the table of contents in Manchester 124 could be Catafagos personal addition to the text. On balance, the fact that the two manuscripts have identical colophons weights strongly in favour of the rst hypothesis as a non-Nus scholar would .ayr have copied the manuscript as he found it, complete with its colophon, instead of inserting his own. Be that as it may, there is a third copy of the K. al-Mashyakha, if only a partial one, in Paris Arabe 6182 fols. 20a37a. This manuscript is an anthology of Nus works dealing with .ayr initiation and is best known for including the K. Tal m diy anat al-nus . ayriyya, the catechism

9769, Library Papers 315, item no. 5569. still remains a description of the contents of MS 721 written in Catafagos own hand. This description was originally attached to a letter written by Bernard Quaritch to Lord Lindsay on 25 February 1858 informing him of the purchase of the manuscript from Catafago. (Accession 9769, Library Papers 3; item no. 51). However it subsequently became detached from the Crawford Correspondences and can now be found at the John Rylands Library where it is attached to the relevant entry for MS 721 in Kerney, Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts Belonging to the Earl of Crawford. It is likely that when Kerney wrote his notes for the catalogue he consulted this letter but neglected to return it to its proper location.
45 There

44 Accession

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of the Nus religion, which has recently been studied by Bar-Asher and Kofsky.46 The .ayr elements of Lydes text that can be found verbatim in Paris Arabe 6182 are al-Tawj h, the nal chapters of the K. al-Mashyakha that deal with drinking the abd al-n ur (fols. 20a30b) as well b al-tilm l and al-Iq dh bad al-sua ad, the two texts appended to the K. al-Mashyakha as Khit .a that deal with initiation (31a37a).47 Since the addition of the chapters on initiation to the main body of the K. al-Mashyakha was likely an innovation of Muh agh , one . ammad of Bishr must assume that the Paris manuscript, which follows this same order, was somehow based on his text.48 Although Bar-Asher and Kofsky noted that these treatises are also found in Manchester 124, they did not relate the identity of any of these texts to Lydes lost K. al-Mashyakha. They were not the rst to overlook this relationship: Lyde, who actually included a translation of the K. Tal m diy anat al-nus . ayriyya in his Asian Mystery, never noticed it either. The culprit behind this inadvertence is once again Joseph Catafago, who was also the rst to publicise this work. Like Bar-Asher and Kofsky, Catafago was particularly interested in the catechism that opened this anthology. In 1845 he sent an Arabic copy of this catechism along with a French translation of the entire manuscript to the King of Prussia, by whom he was then employed.49 From the French translation of the manuscript, the German Orientalist Phillip Wolff produced a German translation of the catechism that he published in 1849.50 Lyde then rendered Wolffs translation into English and appended it to his Asian Mystery.51 This is clearly a case of crucial information being lost in translation. Not having examined the original, Lyde never knew that Catafagos manuscript also included parts of his K. al-Mashyakha. He did, however, recognise that the contents of the catechism were extremely similar to that of his K. al-Mashyakha. He writes: It will be seen, on comparing this catechism with the sketch I have given of my MS., the Manual of Shaykhs, that the arrangement and contents are in the main the same. Even single expressions are nearly identical, and would probably be found to be exactly so could the two Arabic texts be compared.52 Lyde documented the similarity between his manuscript and the catechism by providing references to both works in his footnotes to his descriptions of Nus beliefs. The similarity he noticed is due to .ayr the fact that the K. Tal m diy anat al-nus ayriyya was actually based on the K. al-Mashyakha . and conceived as a digest of the Nus doctrines from this work that a student needed to .ayr
A catechism of the Nus religion in Bar-Asher and Kofsky, Nus -Alaw Religion, pp. 163221. .ayr . ayr correspond to items 1633 of Catafago, Lettre de M. Catafago, pp. 7778. and items 1732 of Lyde, b al-tilm Asian Mystery, pp. 243257. It should be noted that the order of the chapters on initiation (Khit dh bad .a l and al-Iq al-sua ad) in MS Paris 6182 is the reverse of that in MS Lyde 17 and MS Manchester 124, and is likely an error. 48 This conclusion would allow us to roughly date MS Paris Arabe 6182 to some time between 1824, when Muh agh s K. al-Mashyakha was copied, and 1845, when MS Paris Arabe 6182 was rst brought to . ammad of Bishr light. 49 See Fleischer, Wissenschaftlicher Jahresbericht, Jahresbericht der Deutschen Morgenl andischen Gesellschaft (Leipzig, 1846), p. 130; Aus einem Briefe von Dr. Schultz, K on. Preussischem Consul in Jerusalem, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl andischen Gesellschaft, I (1847), p. 353 in which Dr Schultz discusses Catafagos catechism and also mentions two other manuscripts delivered by Catafago: one dealing with Nus feasts, surely the Majm u al-Ay ad .ayr (MS Berlin 4292), as well as a small Nus prayer book (probably that contained in MS Berlin 4291). .ayr 50 Philipp Wolff, Ausz uge aus dem Katechismus der Nosairier, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl andischen Gesellschaft, III (1849), pp. 302309. 51 Lyde, Asian Mystery, pp. 270282. 52 Ibid., 270.
47 These 46 See

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memorise as part of his induction into the sect. Just about every question in the catechism is directly excerpted from the prayers of the K. al-Mashyakha.53 Between the catechism and the chapters of the K. al-Mashyakha quoted in full, almost the entire content of Lydes manuscript is accounted for in Paris Arabe 6182. Had Catafago ever accomplished his goal of publishing the K. al-Mashyakha, he would undoubtedly have noted the relationship between this text and the one he had previously translated for the King of Prussia. But since he never did, and since Lydes illness prevented him from personally examining the source of Catafagos catechism, the connection remained obscured.54 The latest development in the story of the K. al-Mashyakha is the recent publication of another version of this work by the Lebanese press D ar li-ajl al-marifa. For the last decade, this press has been pseudonymously issuing dozens of hitherto undisclosed Nus works .ayr in a eleven-part series called al-Tur ath al-Alaw (the Alawite heritage). The publication of these works is a very signicant development in the history of Nus studies which has .ayr always been plagued by a scarcity of sources. With the recent publication of what can be considered an entire library of new Nus treatises our understanding of this faith can .ayr increase exponentially. One of the works included in the ninth instalment in their series,
53 The following is a list of the catechism questions that derive from the K. al-Mashyakha. I provide the references to both MS Lyde 17 and MS Manchester 124: Q2: (MS Lyde 17, p. 6; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 3b.); Q3: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 9395; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 29ab.); Q45: (MS Lyde 17, p. 8; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 3b4a.); Q9: (MS Lyde 17, p. 20; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 7b.); Q11: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 110111; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 34b-35a.); Q14: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 6668. ; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 20b21a.); Q15: (MS Lyde 17, p. 75; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 23b.); Q1621: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 6065; Arabic MS 124 [722]: pp. 19a-20b.); Q22: (MS Lyde 17: 3840; Arabic MS 124 [722]: pp. 12b-13b.); Q2342: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 4559; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 14b18b.); Q43: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 7883; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 24a25b.); Q44: (MS Lyde 17: 8486 ; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 26ab.); Q4549: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 8890; Arabic MS 124 [722], [p. 27b.); Q5152: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 8081; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 25a.); Q5665: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 2731; Arabic MS 124 [722]: pp. 9a-10b.); Q6667: (MS Lyde 17: pp. 3538; Arabic MS 124 [722]: pp. 11b-12b.); Q69: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 3334; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 11a11b.); Q70: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 4244; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 13b14a.) Q71: (MS Lyde 17, p. 40; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 13a.); Q75: (MS Lyde 17, p. 2; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 2a.); Q83: (MS Lyde 17, p. 164; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 51b.); Q8485: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 17172; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 53b54a.); Q86: (MS Lyde 17, p. 175; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 55a.); Q87: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 126131; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 40a41b.); Q88: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 133136; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 41b42b.); Q8990: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 131132; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 41b.); Q92: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 133135; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 42a-42b.); Q99: (MS Lyde 17, p. 144; Arabic MS 124 [722], p. 45b.); Q101: (MS Lyde 17, pp. 6973; Arabic MS 124 [722], pp. 21b-23a.) Those catechism questions not accounted for in this list are for the most part explanations of concepts introduced in questions that do derive from the K. al-Mashyakha. One notable exception is the controversial Q77, which makes reference to sacramental bread called al-qurb an; its inclusion has been seen as the primary indication of Christian inuence on this text. There is no mention of such a sacrament in the K. al-Mashyakha, and so one must assume that it was an addition of the author. 54 It should be noted that the handwriting of MS Paris 6182 is identical to that of MS Manchester 124 and it is therefore also likely to be a copy produced by Catafago. It is known that Catafago made copies of this manuscript. As mentioned above, he produced a copy of the catechism for the King of Prussia that is now housed in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (MS Berlin, 2086). It also seems that Phillip Wolff, who produced the German translation from Catafagos French translation, inspected another copy owned by Catafago when he visited him in Beirut. I do not know what became of this copy; perhaps it is MS Paris 6182. What is known of the history of MS Paris 6182 is that Jean-Adolphe Decourdemanche (18441916), a scholar and collector of Islamic manuscripts, donated it to the Biblioth` eque Nationale in November 1905. (See E. Blochet, Inventaire des Manuscrits Arabes de la Collection Decourdemanche (Besanc on: Typographie et Lithograph Jacquin, 1906), pp. 34, 78.) There is a mark on folio 1 of the manuscript which indicates that it had been a possession of Joseph Catafago, Beirut, so we know that it came from him, but I have not yet been able to discover whether Catafago sold it directly to Decourdemanche or if there were intervening owners. Perhaps this is something that Catafago regularly did, producing copies of manuscripts and selling them to European collectors. Without overstating this point, I might hesitantly suggest that the title of the catechism, K. Tal m diy anat al-nus . ayriyya, which scholars as early as Lyde have suspected of being a later (outside) addition, may have been introduced by Catafago when he copied the text.

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which came out in 2008 under the title Kutub al-alawiyy n al-muqaddasa, is a K. al-Mashyakha, 55 which makes it the fourth known copy of this work. The K. al-Mashyakha included in the series is much longer and more detailed than the one studied by Lyde, but it is clearly related. Like all of the manuals described in this paper, the Tur ath al-Alaw manual for shaykhs begins with a liturgical section, which includes those prayers and invocations found in Lydes text as well as others, taken from various sources. As in Lydes text, the prayer section is followed by instructions for initiation, which are more detailed but clearly derived from the account in Lydes text. The book then concludes with additional chapters on marriage, death and food preparation. The meticulous stage directions that accompany all of these chapters make the Tur ath al-Alaw K. al-Mashyakha an invaluable commentary on the older text that is its core. While the exact relationship between these two works has not yet been determined, it is clear that they are connected. Their intertextuality reveals the signicance of the K. al-Mashyakha, which managed to inuence the creation of the anthology on initiation found in Paris Arabe 6182 as well as the more extensive manual for sheikhs published in the Silsil at Tur ath al-Alaw . Who knows how many other works have been marked by this text? It clearly also had an active life among the early orientalist scholars of the nineteenth century, and its impact, after its presumed disappearance, can rival that of most published texts, having been quoted time and again from Lydes excerpts of the K. al-Mashyakha and from the K. Tal m diy anat al-nus . ayriyya. Now that this work has been rediscovered, a more thorough investigation of its contents can nally be resumed, one that will take into account the advance of scholarship on the Nus religion in the over 150 years since Lyde based the .ayr rst monograph on Nus .ayrism on this text in 1860. In the near future, I hope to undertake such a project and contribute another piece to our ever-evolving understanding of this secretive faith by producing an annotated translation of this important work.

References
Sulayman al-Adhan , Kit ab al-B ak ura al-sulaym aniyya f kashf asr ar al-diy ana al-nus . ayriyya. (Beirut, 1863). Necati Alkan, Fighting for the Nus Soul: State, Protestant Missionaries and the alaw s in the Late .ayr Ottoman Empire. Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012), pp. 2350. lih t Majh (Latakia, 2006). ula min thawrat al-shaykh . sa Is a Ab u Al ush, S . al-al .a . afah Arabic Ms 124 [722]. Manchester: John Rylands Library. Aus Einem Briefe Von Dr. Schultz, K on. Preussischem Consul in Jerusalem, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl andischen Gesellschaft [Magazine of the German Oriental Society], I (1847), pp. 129131. Meir M. Bar-Asher and Arieh Kofsky, The Nus -Alaw Religion: An Enquiry into Its Theology and . ayr Liturgy (Leiden, 2002). Nicolas Barker, Bibliotheca Lindesiana: The Lives and Collections of Alexander William, 25th Earl of Crawford and 8th Earl of Balcarres, and James Ludovic, 26th Earl of Crawford and 9th Earl of Balcarres (London, 1977). K amil Al Ibr ah m Bays n,. H aiq al-taby n f nasab al-muslim n al-alawiyy n (Beirut, 2006). . aq .

55 Kit ab al-mashyakha, (ed.) Ab u M us a and Shaykh Mus a, Silsil at al-Tur ath al-Alaw 9 (Kutub al-Alawiyy n al-Muqaddasa) (Diy ar Aql: Lebanon, 2008), pp. 141230.

The Rediscovery of Samuel Lydes Lost Nus Kit ab al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs) . ayr

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J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Ofce at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900, Part 2. Vol. IV (Cambridge, 1951). Stefan Winter, La revolte Alaouite de 1834 contre Loccupation Egyptienne: perceptions Alaouites et lecture Ottomane. Oriente Moderno 79, no. 3 (1999), pp. 6171. Philipp Wolff, Ausz uge aus dem Katechismus der Nosairier, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl andischen Gesellschaft [Magazine of the German Oriental Society] III (1849), pp. 302309. btendler@yu.edu

Bella Tendler Krieger

Yeshiva University