The Oriental MSS., in number 420, of the famous Edward Pococke, Regius Professor of Hebrew (who had deceased Sept. 10, 1691), were purchased by the University for £600. They are chiefly in Armenian, Hebrew, and Arabic, with three volumes in Æthiopic, a Samaritan Pentateuch, and a Persian Evangeliary. A list is given at pp. 274-278 of Bernard's Catalogue. In 1822 the Library became possessed of a portion of Pococke's Collection of printed miscellaneous books, by the bequest of Rev. C. Francis, M.A., of Brasenose College. They are chiefly small volumes in Latin, on historical subjects; and are, for the most part, placed in the shelves marked 8^o Z. Jur. [Arabic version of Isaiah, see p. 81.] Another large Oriental collection was added in this year by the purchase, from Dr. Robert Huntington, for the sum of £700, of about 600 MSS. These he had procured while holding the post of chaplain to the English merchants at Aleppo[149]. The collection is one of very great value and rarity. No. 1 is a fine and ponderous Syriac volume, containing the works of Gregory Abulpharage. No. 2 is a very fine folio Arabic MS., written in the year of the Hegira 777 (= A.D. 1375), and dedicated to the Sultan Almalek Alashraf Shalian ben Hosain; in it, as Uri says in his Catalogue, 'variæ Ægypti regiones recensentur, agrorum cujusque regionis mensura definitur, et annui redditus exponuntur.' Dibdin[150] describes it in his own exaggerated style, as follows:--'One of the grandest books-- ... a sort of Domesday compilation--which can possibly be seen.... The scription is in double columns, with the margins emblazoned only in stars. The title, on the reverse of the first leaf, is highly illuminated, in a fine style; not crowded with ornaments, but grand from its simplicity. At the end, we observe that it is (rightly) called _Munus Pretiosum_, and that the author was Sherfiddin Iahia ben Almocar ben Algiaian. The inspection of such a volume, on the coldest possible morning, even when the thermometer stands at _zero_, is sufficient to warm the most torpid system.' No. 80 is a copy of Maimonides' _Yad Hachazaka_, revised by the author, with his autograph signature at the bottom of fol. 165, and a MS. note by him on fol. 1. Of these an engraved facsimile is given in _Treasures of Oxford, containing Poetical Compositions by the ancient Jewish Authors in Spain, and compiled from MSS. in the Bodl. Libr. by H. Edelman and Leop. Dukes; edited and rendered into English by M. H. Bresslau_: part i. 8^o. Lond. 1851. A second part of this work was to have contained prose selections from MSS. in the Huntington, Pococke, Michael, and Oppenheim collections, but no more was published. Among Huntington's books there are also three, of no great antiquity, in the Mendean character, of which Dr. T. Smith narrates in his life of Bernard (1704, p. 21) that two were said to have been given by God to Adam, and the third to the angels, 330,000 years before Adam. And one volume (No. 598)