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Today brought an exciting find. Boris Liebrenz had recently told me he found a reader note by Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq. That is already exciting when a person so elusive is concerned. But this is actually better, and I could/should have found this years ago. Yāsīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās' (1987) catalogue of those manuscripts held in the Syrian National Library today but having once belonged to the holdings of the Abū ʿUmar or ʿUmariyya Madrasa in the suburb Ṣāliḥiyya is a wonderful catalogue, giving information about ownership notes or attendees records (samāʿāt).Alas, it has surprisingly few works by Ibn Ṭūlūn, although verifiably he endowed his library at this very institution. At least that left me with some free time and I checked on another person in which I am interested: Ibn Ṭawq's relative and shaykh (and often enough, employer) Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Qāḍī ʿAjlūn (d. 928). On his family, have a look here.Again, only one of his works remains in (or made its way to) the ʿUmariyya. Yet, it is an interesting find. To be found in MS ʿāmm 3745/Majāmīʿ 8 (pp. 37-42), al-Kanz al-akbar fī al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-l-nahiy ʿan al-munkar (#7) consists of only seven folia but it still excites me, for on the jacket page preceding the text it reads: "This is the book of in the handwriting of al-ʿAllāma Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq" (p. 40).According to al-Sawwās' entry, this work was finished in 894/1488-89, which would correspond to an entry in Ibn Ṭawq's Taʿlīq (vol. 2, p. 842: 14.04.894/17.3.1489) which is about the shaykh writing a text of "about one quire in small format (niṣf baladī)" and in which he treats, among other things, "what was mentioned about the invitation to (targhīb) and the intimidation against (tarhīb) [taking up] al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-l-nahiy ʿan al-munkar".I cannot yet say for sure whether these two texts are indeed identical (but I sure hope so). Ibn Ṭawq writes explicitly that the shaykh "wrote several copies", not he himself. Perhaps, he copied it later for his own use?What is perhaps more important is that this was a chance find. Ibn Ṭawq is often portrayed as a scribe and notary – and occasional copyist. Apart from his own few claims to have copied a book, this manuscript would be the first actual proof for this. Al-Sawwās' detailed description of all components of the Majāmīʿ makes this possible. Yet, in the indices Ibn Ṭawq cannot be found. Even though this might be a simple one-time lapse, al-Sawwās clearly mentions him as the copyist of this work. so why is he not included in the rather extensive index of copyists the catalogue actually offers? After all, Ibn Ṭawq can even be found in al-Ghazzī's well-known biographical dictionary, both in his own and in Abū Bakr's entries. Addition (12 Jan. 2017):As it turns out, Ibn Ṭawq did leave other traces than the one mentioned above. In his biographical entry in al-Tamattuʿ bi-l-iqrān bayn tarājim al-shuyūkh wa-l-aqrān, Ibn Ṭūlūn also credits him with the composition of an excerpt from Ibn Kathīr's history, which, however, I have not been able to identify (Hartmann 1926, 96)._________________________________Richard Hartmann, "Das Tübinger Fragment der Chronik des Ibn Ṭūlūn", Schriften der Königsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft 3/2 (1926), 87-170.Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq, al-Taʿlīq: Yawmiyyāt Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq. Mudhakkirāt kutibat bi-Dimashq fī awākhir al-ʿahd al-Mamlūkī, ed. Shaykh Jaʿfār al- Muhājir, 4 vols, Damascus: IFPO, 2000-2007.Yāsīn Muḥammad al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ al-Madrasa al-ʿUmariyya fī Dār al-Kutub al-Ẓāhirīyya bi-Dimashq, Kuwait: Maʿhad al-Makhṭūṭāt al-ʿArabiyya, 1987.[cite]