ABSTRACT
The one known manuscript of the ġāyat al-maṭlūb is held in the British Library, entered in the accessions list for 1923 as Or. 9247. There is, 90 years on, still no descriptive catalogue entry for it. Brockelmann cites the work as ġāyat al-maṭlūb fī fann al-anġām wa-’l-ḍurūb,1 but despite the accessibility of the manuscript its existence failed to be noted either by Brockelmann or, in the first (and in some ways superior) version of his invaluable bibliographical survey of Arabic musicological literature, by Farmer.2 His reference to the ġāyat al-maṭlūb (item 224) is derived from Ahlwardt’s catalogue of the Berlin Royal Library, where it is cited among a list of musicological works, again with the title ġāyat al-maṭlūb fī fann al-anġām wa-’l-ḍurūb.3 In Farmer’s revised 1965 version of the Sources of Arabian Music the omission is remedied (in item 280) although even here the catalogue number of the British Library manuscript is absent and the title is still not that on the manuscript itself.4 Nor did the reference in this publication to the existence of a British Library copy prevent it remaining, inexplicably, unrecorded in the successor bibliography by Shiloah, despite its greater range, including what appears otherwise to be a thorough coverage of the British Library holdings.5
