Rawḍat al-munajjimīn /
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In the first centuries of Islam, Arabic gradually replaced Middle Persian to become the language of the new religion and the administration of Iran. Works in Middle Persian were translated into Arabic and Persian authors also started writing directly in Arabic. From the fifth/eleventh century onward, there arose a need for works in New Persian, either translated from Arabic or composed in New Persian straightaway. The work published in this volume is a product of that period. Not much is known about the life of its author, Shahmardān b. Abi ʼl-Khayr. A resident of Gurgān and Astarābād, he was a scholar who also worked as a secretary and financial officer. In astronomy, he was a student of Abu ʼl-Ḥasan Nasawī (fl. 2nd quart. 5th/11th cent.). Shahmardān's work is an accessible, popularized compilation of the works of others, among them Abū Maʿshar (d. 272/886), Kushyār b. Labbān (fl. late 4th/10th cent.), and Bīrūnī (d. 440/1048)
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1 online resource. :
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Rāshīkāt al-Hind : Tanāsub nazd-i Hindiyān /
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Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (d. after 442/1050) is one of the greatest scholars in the history of Islam. A native of Kāth, capital of Khwārazm, he wrote on subjects ranging from mathematics, geography, astronomy and natural science to history, linguistics and ethnography. He was a student of, among others, the astronomer-mathematicians Kushyār b. Labbān (fl. 390/1000) and Abū Maḥmūd al-Khujandī (d. 390/1000). He also met and corresponded with Avicenna (d. 428/1037). As was common for a scholar of his rank in those days, he spent his life in the entourage of powerful rulers, in Khwārazm, Khurāsān, and Sidjistān. It was at the court of Maḥmūd b. Sebüktigin (d. 421/1030) and his sucessors in Ghazna that he accompanied Maḥmūd on his campaigns to north-west India. It is there that he got acquainted with Indian methods in the arithmetic of proportions and ratios, the subject of this book. Arabic text with a Persian translation by the editor.
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1 online resource. :
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Al-Ifāda fī tarīkh al-aʾimma al-sāda /
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As is well known, the main difference between the Imāmiyya and Zaydiyya branches in Shīʿī Islam is to do with the fact that the Zaydiyya-named so after their first leader Zayd b.ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 122/740)-did not unconditionally condemn the first three caliphs before ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, while to the Imāmiyya branch, all Sunnīs were infidels. But even though the Zaydīs did not consider Sunnīs generally as infidels, they regarded rebellion against Sunnī rule -unlawful to them-as a religious duty for all. The Imāmīs on the other hand, while radical in doctrine, did not have a militant attitude comparable to that of the Zaydīs. Geographically, the Zaydīs divided into a Yemeni and an Iranian branch, concentrated along the shores of the Caspian sea. The present work contains the biographies of 15 Zaydī imams, some from the Caspian, the author-Abū Ṭālib Hārūnī (d. 424/1033)-being a Zaydī scholar from that region.
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1 online resource. :
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Sharḥ al-Taʿarruf li-madhhab al-taṣawwuf /
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The Kitāb al-taʿarruf li-madhhab al-taṣawwuf by Abū Bakr b. Isḥāq al-Kalābādhī (d. 380-85/990-995) is one of the most famous early manuals on Sufism. Written in Bukhara under the strongly orthodox Samanids, it consists of four parts: an explanation of the term ṣūfī and a listing of famous Sufis with a typology of their writings, an exposition of the Sufī creed and its conformity with orthodox Islam, an explanation of the spiritual path of the Sufi with accompanying terminology, and a description of Sufi conduct and of their special relation with God. The work saw four commentaries, the present one by Ismāʿīl Mustamlī Būkhārī (d. 434/1043) being one of them. Starting each time with a brief quotation from the original Arabic, the commentary in Persian. This is a facsimile edition of a manuscript from the Bhīravī collection in the National Archives of Pakistan, dated 473/1081. The manuscript is incomplete, with about half of the commentary missing.
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"Nuskhah bargardān bih qaṭʻ-i aṣl-i nuskhah-i khaṭṭī bih shumārah-i 207.1959. M. N. Mūzih-i Millī-i Pākistān (Karāchī), kitābat-i 473 H." :
1 online resource. :
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Sullam al-samawāt /
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In the Persianate world, encyclopaedias have a long history. Arabic works by Persian authors aside (like Ibn Farīghūn's Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm , 4th/10th century), the earliest encyclopaedia in Persian is Avicenna's (d. 428/1037) philosophical Dānishnāma-yi ʿAlāʾī . Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī's (d. 606/1210) Jāmiʿ al-'ulūm on the other hand, is an encyclopaedia on everything there was to know at the time. Philosophical encyclopaedias would usually divide into logic, physics and metaphysics, more general encyclopaedias into the pre-Islamic and Islamic sciences, also called the rational ( ʿaqlī ) and traditional ( naqlī ) sciences, even if a strict separation was not always maintained. In addition, there were also specialized encyclopaedias like Ibn Ḥusayn Jurjānī's medical Dhākhira-yi Khwārazmshāhī (early 6th/12th century). The content of encyclopaedias often being dependent on the author's interests and intellectual horizon, no universal format exists. The present work by Abū Qāsim Kāzarūnī (fl. early 11th/17th century) is an example of a very personal encyclopaedia, treating of religion, philosophy, and literature.
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1 online resource. :
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Al-Mukhtaṣar min Kitāb al-siyāq li-tārīkh-i Nīsābūr /
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In the Islamic middle ages, urban histories were for the most part not the kind of chronicle that one might think, covering the political, economic, or cultural history of a particular city over a certain time. Instead, they were a kind of 'who's who' directory of names of a city's prominent inhabitants, mostly from as far back as information would be available until the lifetime of the author. In the case of the city of Nishapur, which saw its greatest blossoming between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, there is al-Ḥākim al-Nīshāpūrī's (d. 405/1014) foundational Taʾrīkh Nīsābūr , an Arabic work-now lost-on which many later biographers relied. Al-Ḥākim's work was continued by ʿAbd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī (d. 529/1134) in his al-Siyāq li-Taʾrīkh Nīsābūr . The text published here is described as a partial summary of al-Fārisī's work, although Frye in his The Histories of Nishapur (p. 10) still regarded it as a fragment of the Siyāq itself.
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1 online resource. :
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Zīj-i Yamīnī /
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In Islamic science, a zīj is an astronomical handbook made up of tables and text. Between the 2nd/8th and 13th/19th centuries, over 200 such works were written, many of them lost. Famous zīj are al-Zīj al-Ṣābiʾ by al-Battānī (ca 300/900), al-Qānūn al-Masʿūdī by al-Bīrūnī (421/1030), and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's (d. 672/1274) Zīj-i Īlkhānī . The Zīj-i Yamīnī published in facsimile here was compiled in Ghazna in 511/1156 by a certain Muḥammad al-Ḥaqāʾiqī and dedicated to the Ghaznavid ruler Bahrāmshāh b. Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd (reg. 511-552/1117-1157). It is the third oldest zīj in Persian, after the Zīj-i mufrad of Muḥammad b. Ayyūb Ṭabarī (485/1092) and the Persian translation of Kūshyār b. Labbān Gīlānī's (fl. ca. 390/1000) Arabic al-Zīj al-jāmiʿ by Muḥammad b. ʿUmar Munajjim-i Tabrīzī in 483/1090. Al-Ḥaqāʾiqī based himself on the works of others, notably al-Battānī's al-Zīj al-Ṣābiʿ , whose data he then recalculated for the city of Ghazna where necessary. Good example of early scientific Persian.
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1 online resource. :
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Al-Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa /
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Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) was an influential philosopher, theologian, mathematician and astronomer, besides being the first director of the famous observatory at Marāghah near Tabriz as well as a man of politics. The author of a large number of works, he is especially famous for such treatises as his Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād on theology; the Zīj-i Īlkhānī on astronomy; the Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt ; his influential commentary on Avicenna's (428/1037) Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt on philosophy and logic; and his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī on ethics. Another famous work is his Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa published here. As stated by the editor, this is one of the most important and influential astronomical works written in the pre-modern Islamic world. It belongs to the second phase of Ṭūsī's academic career and constitutes a synthesis between two earlier works by him, written when he was still working for the Nizārī Ismailis. Arabic text and apparatus, Persian introduction translated from the English edition.
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1 online resource. :
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Khuld-i barīn : Rawḍahā-yi shīshum u haftum-Tārīkh-i Tīmūriyān u Turkmānān /
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In the Islamic world, universal histories have been written almost from the very beginning. Among the Arabic works one could, for example, mention the Kitāb akhbār al-rusul wal-mulūk by Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī (3rd/9th cent.), Ibn Miskawayh's (d. 421/1030) Kitāb tajārib al-umam , or the Mukhtaṣar taʾrīkh al-bashar by Abu ʼl-Fidāʾ (d. 732/1331). The first such history in New Persian was the abstract of Ṭabarī's Akhbār that was made by Abū ʿAlī Balʿamī (d. between 382-87/992-97) for the Samanid emir Manṣūr b. Nūḥ (d. 365/976). Many other works followed, such as Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī's Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh (composed in 699-710/1300-10) or the Tārīkh-i Ḥāfiẓ Abrū by Ḥāfiẓ Abrū (d. 833/1430). The present work by Muḥammad Yūsuf Wālih Qazwīnī (d. after 1078/1667) is a universal history with a focus on the Safavids. The sections published here describe the history of the Timurids and the Aq and Qara Qoyunlu dynasties, vital to our understanding of the rise of the Safavids.
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1 online resource. :
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9789646781511