The divine banquet of the brain and other essays

works of the most prominent authors such as: Zarrindast, Isma'fl Djurdjanr, MansUr b. Muhammad b. Ahmad, Hadji Zain al-Attar, and Muhammad Arzani. Appreciating this, Richter-Bernburg puts an intense effort into the analysis of the content of each manuscript, which, unusually for collections of Persian manuscripts, is not overshadowed by the beauty of the miniatures and illustrations. This enhances the catalogue's value as a useful source for Persian medical history. The entries are comprehensive, each containing a detailed description of various sections and even sub-sections of the text for almost every manuscript. In the case of more prominent works, such as Dhakhrrah-yi Khharazmshalhi by Isma'il Diur1jani, these descriptions are followed by a remarkable amount of information on the author's life and professional experiences, which is usually analysed in detail. Neither is the physical make-up of the manuscripts neglected. Adequate information on this is given, and, in particular, damaged folios are accurately recorded. In dealing with the Persian text itself, particularly for more comprehensive works, in addition to the incipit and explicit of each manuscript, the incipits of the important sections also appear in the entry. This is of great assistance to scholars who do not have access to the actual manuscript. The proper names mentioned in each entry appear only in English, in a system of transliteration which is slightly different from that of the new edition of the Encyclopaedia ofIslam. Except for a brief note in the preface, no information is given about the provenance of the collection as a whole or of any of the individual manuscripts. This note implies that the collection was brought together by a Westerneducated physician in contemporary Iran. This is a further indication that more attention has been paid by the cataloguer to the collection as a number of medical works significant for their texts than to the history of their provenance. References to other existing manuscripts of a given text are made to comprehensive and reliable sources such as C. A. Storey's Bio-bibliographical survey and A. Munzawi's Union catalogue of Persian manuscripts. Indexes of titles, proper names, and incipits provide an easy access to the wealth of information in the catalogue. This descriptive catalogue of Persian medical manuscripts at the University of California, Los Angeles, will, as the title suggests, be of more importance to scholars interested in the history of Persian medicine than to those who admire the especial physical beauty of Persian manuscripts from an artistic point of view. Fateme Keshavarz Wellcome Institute