THE KITAB-INN MANUSCRIPT
1.
When Skopje was burned, in the autumn of 1689, a parchment
manuscript written in Turkish was destroyed, and only one of its pages
remained, torn in two by some impatient plunderer: the page was ripped from
the top down through the middle, and the text could not be reconstructed
without putting the two halves together. One half of the page – the left –
was noticed and taken – as a memento and out of curiosity – by an officer
of the Austrian army of General Picollomini, Joseph von Zarich, just when
the city was fully in flames, set ablaze from all four sides. The second
half of the page – the right –was found some ten days later, in the parched
autumn grass next to the wall of the Mustafa Pasha Mosque, by the pious and
learned Samizade Musa Efendi, an immigrant from the sacred city of Commes
in Persia, who thought of his discovery as a kind of creature saved from
the fire, a special token of divine mercy.
2.
The text on the parchment was actually a quotation from the
manuscript of the Arab alchemist and prince of the Omeida dynasty, Khalid
ibn Jazid. It was a fragment of the book "The Conversations of King Khalid
and Marien the Physicist." The source of the quotation is even older: some
claim that it comes from the pen of Volos Democritis, who lived two hundred
years before Christ, and who, after Alexandria, wrote his "Physics" in
Greek, a treatise on the transmutation of common metals into gold. Much
later, the manuscript of this "pseudo-Democrites" (as he was called in the
Middle Ages) was revised by Stephanos of Alexandria, an alchemist who lived
in the seventh century, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Iracleus,
a great patron of the secret sciences. Stephanos' work would be continued
by his disciple, the cloistered Palestinian monk Marianos, or, as he was
called later, Marien. This monk-alchemist – despite the different belief
systems – would become the young prince's teacher, who was separated from
the throne by court intrigues and would become, in imposed retirement, a
lover and then a great aficionado of the science of alchemy. Persecuted in
Europe – where the Emperor Dioclecian ordered that all books on "Egyptian
chemistry" be burnt -- the esoteric sciences spread throughout the Arab
world. Jabir ibn Hayem, the Arab scholar who most contributed to the
development of alchemy, known as Jabir from Kufa, a student of the Caliph
Jafar, would employ many formulas and citations from the book of Khalid ibn
Jazid in his own works. Some of his books – "The Totality of Perfection,"
"The Book of Furnaces" – would become known to Byzantine scholars. Via
Constantinople, they would also reach other parts of the Byzantine empire,
and some of these works – previously translated into Greek – would be
copied by Basil the Healer, a Byzantine alchemist from the end of eleventh
century, perhaps of Slavic origin, who was a monk on the shores of Lake
Ohrid and was burned at the stake in 1118 for alchemy and his participation
in Bogomilism. A copy of one of these texts, concealed among copies of
sacred books, would be kept in the Ohrid church of St. Pantelejmon: when
the church was turned into a mosque in the fifteenth century, the Greek
manuscript would fall into the hands of a well educated Ohrid dervish from
the Halveta sect, an expert and follower of the Sufi school, Ali ibn Sina.
After he translated it into Turkish, and transcribed it in very beautiful
calligraphy on parchment, he gave it to the commander of the Skopje
fortress, Egit Pasha. After the death of Egit Pasha, on whose tombstone a
key was engraved – not as a sign of power, but as a symbol of the knowledge
of secret sciences -- the manuscript, according to a list of books that
disappeared later, would be found in Skopje's Kitab-Inn, a large Moslem
library of manuscripts that contained commentaries on the Koran, but also
treatises on neo-Platonism and the esoteric sciences. As the library was
being burned during Picollomini’s military campaign, the unknown robber
would tear one page from the book, throwing the book itself in the fire,
and he would take the page with him, but later, probably burdened with many
valuables, he would rip it in two and discard it on his way.
3.
The left half of the page, the one picked up by Joseph von
Zarich, would be found – after passing through military archives, home
libraries, curio collections, and private museums – in the beginning of the
twentieth century, in a Viennese antiquarian shop. There, one spring
afternoon in 1923, it would be bought – its character recognized, albeit
unclearly and nebulously – by Isaac ben Saruk, an assistant in the
Department of Oriental Sciences at the University of Prague, a specialist
in the Kabala and the occult sciences. He easily read Turkish, Arabic, and
Persian, and by the shape of the letters, some deviations from standard
grammar rules, and the idiosyncrasies of the transcriber, he would
understand that the manuscript originated in the Balkans, that it had been
transcribed or translated from an older text some time in the fifteenth
century, and according to the few words remaining in the forcefully severed
sentences he would assume that it was a text from the field of alchemy.
Working on his doctorate at the University of Prague, on the traces of
esoteric Islamic learning in Moslem folklore of the Balkans, Isaac ben
Saruk would travel south in just a few months. He would reach Skopje in
late July and would take up lodgings at "Janche-Inn," built, as he himself
would conclude, on the foundations of an inn where caravans once stopped,
coming and going from Asia Minor and the Near East. The lodge was
uncomfortable and not clean enough. However, Isaac ben Saruk wanted to
familiarize himself with the oriental atmosphere and overlooked this
unpleasantness. In fact, he would spend all day walking through the Skopje
Bazaar, talking to peasants, craftsmen, and traders, asking about
dervishes, vampire hunters, sorceresses, and herb collectors. Half of the
rent manuscript purchased in Vienna would remain in his large trunk,
situated in the corner of his room on the ground floor of the inn, secured
with three locks.
4.
One morning Isaac ben Saruk would enter a randomly selected
barber shop, tucked away in an alley in a remote section of the old Bazaar,
to get a shave. There, within the frame of the "Craftsmen’s Certificate,"
under the text inscribed between two female figures, allegorical
representations of industry and craftsmanship, under the glass spattered by
flies, he would see a torn piece of parchment that looked familiar. It
would be, with several discolored photographs, in the lower part of the
frame, under the signatures and seals that confirmed the right of Jusuf
Hadri to practice his tonsorial craft. Approaching, he would immediately
recognize it: it was the second, right part of the manuscript that he had
bought several months ago in the Viennese antiquarian shop. There was
almost no doubt, but still he had to check, and it was not possible at that
moment.
Trying to conceal his excitement, Isaac ben Saruk would
nonchalantly ask about the origin of the discolored fragment. The owner of
the barber shop would be vague: he initially feared that his customer was a
tax office official, a financial office or a political provocateur. Once he
determined that the foreigner was none of the above, his oriental cunning
would awaken in him: he would refuse any conversation about the manuscript,
he would proclaim the fragment of parchment sacred, he would mention his
late father who had left it for him, and he would manage to attract many
curious people to the shop with his oratorical fervor.
Isaac ben Saruk would still manage to examine the manuscript
(without being permitted to take it out of the glass because of its owner's
distrust), and he would become even more convinced that it was the second
half of the torn manuscript, the right half of the page, the matching left
side of which was concealed in his trunk at the inn. After he repeatedly
offered to buy the fragment of parchment, and seeing that its owner had no
intention of selling it, he would leave the barber shop, accompanied by
openly curious and mockingly commiserating glances.
The chatter around the Bazaar would not give him any
satisfaction that day. He would go to his room early, but he would not be
able to fall asleep until midnight: in the gardens of the small cafes in
the area clarinets would play, there would be whoops of appreciation for
the belly dancers, and from time to time the jingle of a tambourine.
Half-asleep, Isaac ben Saruk would hear tapping on his
window: when he heard it again, he would get up and see a stranger's face
in the window frame, recognized a bit later by Isaac ben Saruk as the face
of one of the curious onlookers at the barber shop. The stranger, smirking
and salivating, would hand him the crumbled piece of parchment; Isaac ben
Saruk would recognize the second half of the torn manuscript, separated
from its mate for centuries. With the fingers of both hands the stranger
would indicate how much he expected for it. Isaac ben Saruk would give him
ten denars somewhat heedlessly, that is, he suppressed any thought of the
manner in which the rogue most likely obtained the valuable fragment.
Then, switching on his light, he would take from his trunk
the other piece of parchment. Both halves would join on the uneven line
that had separated them for more than two centuries. But when he finally
tried to read the reunited halves of the manuscript, a sudden darkness
filled the room. The electricity would go off – because of a short circuit
in the inn, because of some malfunction in the system, or from some other
unknown cause. Groping in the darkness, Isaac ben Saruk would lock the
pieces at the bottom of his trunk.
There are several versions of what would happen the next day:
A. Isaac ben Saruk woke up and, leaving the reading of the
manuscript for later, passed through the Bazaar. Although he did not want
to go near the barber shop, still, at one moment, not knowing how, he found
himself exactly in front of it. Turning his eyes aside out of guilt, he
wanted to pass by, but the owner of the barber shop cheerfully waved his
hand and wished him good morning, inquiring about his health. Although he
felt a vague pang of conscience, he had to enter. After an exchange of
greetings, Isaac ben Saruk looked at the "Craftsman’s Certificate." There
under the grimy glass lay the fragment of manuscript, as if nobody had
touched it. However, the manuscript was not the same: now here at the same
spot, next to the photographs, was the left part of the torn manuscript,
the one that legally, until then, belonged to Isaac ben Saruk. Astonished,
Isaac ben Saruk stared at the piece of manuscript, then, almost without
saying good-bye, he left the store, ran to his lodgings, unlocked his
trunk, and found only the right piece of the manuscript, which without
hesitation he burned with a match, and left Skopje as early as noon.
B. When he passed through the Bazaar in the morning, after
checking the locks of his trunk and relishing the thought of the postponed
pleasure of the final deciphering of the manuscript, Isaac ben Saruk
noticed a great uproar. A lot of people had gathered in the alley where the
barber shop was located. Isaac ben Saruk learned that somebody had broken
into the shop the previous night and killed the barber (who was there for
reasons unknown) by slitting his throat. As Isaac ben Saruk stood
perplexed, he was noticed by the curious onlookers from the barber shop,
was reported to the police, and his interest in the manuscript within the
frame, now missing, was emphasized. He was taken to police headquarters,
questioned and roughed up, but he emphatically denied any connection to the
murder and the theft of the manuscript, and he did not mention the
nocturnal visitor. His trunk was sent for, opened, and – though all its
contents were examined thoroughly – they found no trace of the piece of
parchment they were looking for. To Isaac ben Saruk’s astonishment, in the
place where he had put both parts of the manuscript the previous night,
there was now nothing. After he produced the letters of recommendation he
carried with him, the police revised their attitude towards him, becoming
polite and apologetic. He was released, but the police officer advised him
to leave as soon as possible, because, as the officer told him, all manner
of things were being said about him in the city. He took his trunk and
immediately left Skopje.
C. After he passed through the Bazaar in the morning, Isaac
ben Saruk returned to his lodgings at noon. He entered his room, locked the
door behind him and opened his trunk. With much excitement, he expected
finally to read the whole text of the restored page. He retrieved the two
halves of the manuscript from the bottom of his trunk. But something swayed
before his eyes, and for a moment he thought there was something wrong with
his vision. After he came to himself, he realized that what he held in his
hands were two identical torn parts, two left-side fragments of the same
manuscript. Everything was the same on them: the parchment, the Arabic
script, the stains of time, the irregular line along which they had been
torn. Both parts repeated the same parts of sentences, the same vague and
incomplete thoughts. In a frenzy, he squeezed them into a small ball and
threw them out the window. Then he demanded that the porter summon a
carriage. He loaded his trunk and told the coachman to head for the
station. He left Skopje on the first train.
D. As he walked through the Bazaar that morning, Isaac ben
Saruk noticed many eyes fixed on him. Then he started being accosted by
strangers – crippled, with ominous scabs on their faces, with speech
impediments, with a marble glaze over one eye, with the trappings of
transvestites. Those were probably beggars, hawkers, smugglers, pimps – the
dark nature of their trade apparent in the permanent frothing smirks on
their faces. And all of them, as if secretly, with a kind of condescending,
unclean familiarity, offered Isaac ben Saruk their merchandise – the very
same piece of parchment whose two halves lay in Isaac ben Saruk's trunk,
and all of these pieces were, or aspired to be, copies, or they slightly
resembled the original page. Some of them were identical to what he had in
his trunk: with the same yellowing of age: with the same very beautiful and
noble calligraphy, with the same meticulous care in filling the page.
Others were very good copies, but still copies – apparent from some minor
carelessness in the application of patina to the parchment or in some
barely noticeable mistakes in abbreviating the words. Others, on the other
hand, were poor in their attempt to resemble the original – odd scribbling
full of senseless strokes, made in haste and rife with ignorance. But among
these three types were innumerable variations, which made the overlaps and
differences among them less distinct: the skill of imitation at times made
them similar enough to the original in detail to exhibit a kind of
dilettantism. The sellers approached him from all sides, and, winking,
showed him the sheets, accompanying their gestures with half articulated
sounds. The pages appeared from everywhere: they produced them from their
armpits, pockets, sleeves; some of the sellers even had several identical
copies – sometimes of the same quality in the imitative skill, sometimes of
a different quality. They tore the sheet before his eyes, and as a result
of their skill they created halves separated just like the two halves owned
by Isaac ben Saruk. The Bazaar abounded with doubles of the manuscript from
his trunk; he repelled the offers by waving and pushing, and rushed to the
inn in a frenzy. He opened his trunk, removed the two halves of the page
and looked at them carefully. Although he had not doubted their originality
to that point, now he started to notice many mistakes, small gaps in logic,
even traces of deftly concealed deceptions. He realized, desperate, that
some of those samples offered at the dark corners of the Bazaar were far
closer to the original than these pieces, and that the original was
infinitely unreachable and impossible to check. Without trying to read the
text, no longer believing in its authenticity, seeing that the deviations
and corrections had no beginning or end, he tore both pieces of the page to
even smaller shreds, threw them down the latrine in the yard of the inn,
and left Skopje.
5.
All of these variations of the event are possible, because
they all end with one certain fact – that Isaac ben Saruk left Skopje
suddenly, without the pieces of the manuscript in his luggage. Although
later in his doctoral thesis he would provide very interesting details of
Macedonia's past, supported by many documents, he would say nothing about
the manuscript.
In fact, we learn about the incident of the two pieces of the
manuscript from other sources, indirectly, through the grapevine and its
unfettered conclusions. Long after, it was discussed around the Bazaar, not
loudly but in whispers, in incomplete sentences, more with gestures,
onomatopoeia, and knowing facial expressions, rather than in clear and
precise language. The allusions to the event in the newspapers – mainly in
small local papers, through anecdotes, in brief notices, and in police
reports – are open to innumerable interpretations, with ambiguities and
contradictions. So knowledge of the event itself, in its current form (or
rather, forms), abounds with gaps in chronology and considerable murkiness.
It is strange, of course, that a manuscript whose fate we can
follow for several centuries, has left such an undetectable trail in our
times. In fact, probably in an attempt to explain the many variations of
the tale, some say that in Skopje at that time there were two people with
the name Isaac ben Saruk. They even stayed at the same inn. Some say –
exaggerating, of course – that there were four of them. If this
preposterous proposition were accepted – which still circulates among the
older citizens of the city and which is, in fact, a doubling of the
classical doppelganger – then each of the variations could be correct: all
the personalities with this name stay in the city in similar circumstances,
and their travails deviate from their commonality for just a moment, to be
merged again soon.
Of course, there is no confirmation that four people with the
same not-everyday name stayed in Skopje at the end of July, 1923. But those
who have examined the annals of the city know that a person by this name
stayed in Skopje in 1893, many years after the fire and the ensuing
looting. This Isaac ben Saruk would be arrested as he was drawing a map of
the city, according to a report of the Skopje qadi next to the City Gate,
and he would be accused of being an Austrian spy: his further history is
unknown. Another Isaac ben Saruk is mentioned in an order sent from the
Gate to the Skopje qadi, in 1783, in which he is said to be one of the Jews
who bought female slaves who had accepted Islam, converting them to his own
faith later: judging by some other reports, this person, probably warned
about the possible consequences of his actions, would disappear from the
city that same year. A third Isaac ben Saruk is referred to in the travel
book of Irbi and Mackenzie, "Travel in the Slavic Countries of European
Turkey"; according to these English travel writers who passed through
Skopje in 1873, a person with this name tried in vain to persuade the
Pasha, the ruler of the city, to drain the Katlanovo marshes and thus save
Skopje from malaria, but he succeeded only in eliciting suspicion and
hatred from the Turks. The fourth in line – if we consent to searching for
four visitors to the city, not on the same day, but at different times in
the city's history – would be the Prague orientalist of that July noon,
1923. But who then is the stranger taken from the ruins of the Makedonija
Hotel after the disastrous earthquake of 1963, whose personal documents
were never found, but who clutched two crumpled halves of a torn parchment
written in Arabic script, and on whose face there was no death spasm, but a
serene smile? The fastidious experts in identification had the manuscript
translated. The translation included with the official report reads, "We
all started from the same place with the same goal, though we would reach
it by different paths. The course of years changes a man, as he is a
prisoner of time, and it creates disorder in his understanding of things."
The experts never realized that it was a quotation from an
old book on alchemy; but even if they had, who knows whether it would have
helped them in their work.
