Tuḥfat al-abrār fī manāqib al-aʾimma al-aṭhār /
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ʿImād al-Dīn Ṭabarī (fl. 2nd half 7th/13th cent.) was a Shīʿī religious scholar. Little is known about his personal life, just that he was born in Ṭabaristān (today's Māzandarān) and that he was from the generation after Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274). It is not known with whom he studied or when he left his region of origin. What we do know, is that he lived until 667/1268-9 in Burūjird, that in 671/1272-3 he was a resident of Qum, and that in 672/1273-4, Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-Juwaynī (d. 683/1284)-then chancellor of the exchequer under the Mongol ruler Abāqā Khān (d. 680/1282)-sent him to Isfahan to polemicise against the enemies of the Shīʿa. He is the author of some 18 works, ten of which are on Imamism, the doctrine on which Twelver Shīʿism is founded. The Persian Tuḥfat al-abrār is one of these, published here for the very first time.
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Qānūn-i Shāhanshāhī /
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Idrīs Bidlīsī (d. 926/1520) was the son of a munshī (secretary) in the chancery of the court of the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Ḥasan (d. 882/1478) first in Diyarbakır and then Tabriz. Idrīs must have enjoyed the usual education for an adolescent of his social background. He was fluent in Persian and Arabic, knowing Kurdish as well. He started his career in Tabriz under Yaʿqūb Beg (d. 896/1490), and served him and his descendants for seventeen years in various high administrative offices. When Tabriz was conquered by the Safavids in 907/1501, he fled to the court of the Ottoman emperor Bāyazīd II (d. 918/1512) in Istanbul, serving him and Selīm I (d. 926/1520) in different positions and capacities. Bidlīsī authored more than twenty works but is best known for his Hasht Bihisht , a history of the Ottoman empire written for Bāyazīd II. The present work is a mirror for princes type of composition with a strong religious colouring.
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Tadhkirat al-shuʿarāʾ /
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Born into a family of scholars and literati in Samarqand, Muḥammad 'Sulṭān' Muṭribī Samarqandī (d. 1040/1630) regarded himself as a descendant of Arghūn Āqā (d. 673/1275), viceroy of the Mongols in Khurāsān. He received a broad education with an emphasis on literature and music, first in Samarqand and then in Bukhara. His major teacher in literature in Bukhara was Ḥasan Nithārī Bukhārāʾī (d. 1004/1596). Muṭribī is well-known for his Khāṭirāt , recollections of his highly-polished conversations with the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr (d. 1627), which took place during his visit to him in Lahore in 1036/1626. The other work for which he is known is his Persian Tadhkirat al-shuʿarāʾ , a biographical dictionary of some 343 poets, emirs, and sultans, mainly from Transoxania and Badakhshān. A unique source of information on its time and modelled on a similar work by his teacher, it is based on his direct acquaintance with most of the people it describes.
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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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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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Ḥikmat-i Khāqāniyya : Shāmil-i yak dawra-yi mukhtaṣar-i mantiq, ṭabīʿiyyāt u ilāhiyyāt /
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Bahāʾ al-Dīn Iṣfahānī (d. 1137/1725), better known as Fāḍil Hindī, was born into a comfortable home in Isfahan. Being a particularly precocious child, he completed his studies in the traditional and the foreign sciences by the age of thirteen, even carrying the title of mujtahid (someone authorized to issue legal opinions in Shīʿī Islam). He then accompanied his father to the court of the Mughal emperor Awrangzīb (r. 1658-1707), where he remained for several years before returning to Isfahan. At a time at which Isfahan was under the spell of the anti-speculative, literalist Akhbārī school in Shīʿism, Fāḍil Hindī was one of the few to engage in philosophy, so much so that one could call him equally a juristic philosopher or a philosophical jurist. The present work is a very readable, complete course in logic and philosophy that bears witness to his originality as a thinker in each of these domains.
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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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Tarjuma-yi Kitāb al-Nijāra : Dar handasa-yi ʿamalī /
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Abu ʼl-Wafāʾ Būzjānī (d. 388/998) was a mathematician and astronomer and a native of Būzjān near Nishapur. He studied arithmetic with two of his uncles, probably in Būzjān. When he was nineteen years old he went to Baghdad. There he further developed himself to become one of the leading scientists of his age, working at the Buyid court. He was a contemporary and protector of the chronicler of intellectual and artistic life in Baghdad at the time, Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. ca. 414/1023). In the bibliographical literature more than twenty works are ascribed to him, many of which were lost. The present work was originally written in Arabic under the title Kitāb fī mā yaḥtāj ilayhi ʼl-ṣāniʿ fī aʿmāl al-handasa . It is a groundbreaking work in that Būzjānī was the first to write a monograph on practical geometry as justified by the rules of theoretical geometry. Medieval Persian and French translation, with introductions and notes.
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Jawāhir-i tafsīr : Tafsīrī adabī ʿirfānī ḥurūfī, shāmil-i muqaddamaʾī dar ʿulūm-i Qurʾānī wa tafsīr-i sūra-yi ḥamd /
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The Qurʾān is a complex text, and it has been regarded as such since the very beginning. Qurʾān interpretation or tafsīr was already practiced by the Prophet's nephew ʿAbdallāh b. al-ʿAbbās, who used folklore and poetry to interpret his uncle's revelations. With the passing of time, Qurʾānic exegesis developed from a mere branch of tradition ( ḥadīth ) into a full-fledged, independent discipline. The earliest Persian Qurʾān commentary was a translation of Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī's (d. 311/923) Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān , made in 345/956. The Persian commentary contained in the present volume was composed in 890/1485 in Herat by Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1504-05), a prolific author, preacher and mystic of the Timurid era. Originally meant to comprise four volumes, it was discontinued halfway the fourth sura, and is only partially reproduced in the present edition. Kāshifī's detailed, literary commentary stands out by his unique use of the esoteric properties of letters and numbers.
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Tadhkira-yi Muqīm-i khānī : Sayr-i tārīkhī, farhangī u ijtimāʿi-yi Mā warāʾ al-nahr dar ʿahd-i Shībāniyān u Ashtarkhāniyān /
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Throughout history, the lands of Central Asia have seen empires come and go. A case in point is Transoxania, a region roughly situated between the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers. After the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, Transoxania became part of the Chagatai khanate, following which it was first ruled by the Timurids and then by the Shibanids and the Janids (Ashtarkhanids) as the khanate of Bukhara. At the beginning of the 18th century, Janid power over the khanate of Bukhara had declined to the point that a local leader called Muḥammad Muqīm Bahādur Khān (d. 1119/1707) declared himself independent in Balkh in 1114/1702. His reign was short-lived and he was summarily executed in 1119/1707. The present volume describes the history of the Shibanids, the Janids and the coming-to-power of Muqīm Bahādur Khān until the year 1116/1704. Its author, Bahādur's secretary Muḥammad Munshī, intended to write a sequel, which has, however, never been found.
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Tarjama-yi Taqwīm al-tawārīkh : Sālshumār-i waqāyiʿ-i muhimm-i jahān az āghāz-i āfarīnish tā sāl-i 1085 H.Q. /
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The Ottoman biographer, historian and former career military officer Kātib Çelebi (d. 1067/1657), better known as Ḥājjī Khalīfa, completed his Taqwīm al-tawārīkh in Istanbul in 1058/1648. Begun as an excerpt of his earlier history Fadhlakat aqwāl al-akhyār , he expanded it to cover personalities and events up to the days in which it was written. Composed in a mixture of Ottoman Turkish and Persian, it became a popular 'desk reference' that received various upgrades by different eighteenth-century authors. The work was printed for the first time in Istanbul by İbrahim Müteferriqa in 1146/1733. The Taqwīm al-tawārīkh was translated into Latin, Italian and French, besides the anonymous Persian translation contained in this volume, completed in 1075/1664, well before any of the other translations. It is one of the rare historical works in Persian to have the form of a chronology, most of them being histories of dynasties or general histories.
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Bahāristān wa rasāʾil-i Jāmī : Mushtamil bar risālahā-yi mūsīqī, ʿarūḍ, qiyāfa, chihil ḥadīth, nāʾiyya, lawāmiʿ, sharḥ-i tāʾiyya, lawāyiḥ wa sar rishta /...
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Regarded by many as the last great mystical poet of medieval Persia, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) spent the greater part of his life in Herat. As a student, he excelled in every subject he engaged in and appeared destined for an academic career. But then, in his early thirties, he went through a spiritual crisis that ended in his joining the Herat branch of the mystical Naqshbandiyya order, led by the charismatic Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456). A protégé of three successive Timurid rulers in Herat, Jāmī's wide network of friendships and relations extended from spiritual and literary circles through the political to the academic. With 39.000 lines of verse and over 30 prose works to his name, Jāmī's literary production is quite overwhelming. The present volume contains his Bahāristān , in imitation of Saʿdī's (d.691/1291-92) work on morals Gulistān , as well as a number of other texts, treating of music, poetry and mysticism.
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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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Tafsīr-i Shahristānī al-Musammā bi-Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār. Volume 1 /
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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahristānī (d. 548/1153) was a prominent historian of religions who was well-versed in Islamic theology and the sciences of the Qurʾān. He is mostly known for his Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal , a ground-breaking history of religions, his Kitāb muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa , a critical exposition of the philosophy of Avicenna (d. 428/1037)-later refuted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Tūsī (d. 672/1274) in his Maṣāriʿ al-muṣāriʿ -and the Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār , his partial Qurʾān commentary contained in the present two volumes. The Mafātīḥ al-asrār was written in the final years of Shahristānī's life and clearly bears the stamp of Ismailism, a branch of Shīʿism to which he had been introduced as a young man by his teacher in Qurʾānic studies in Nishapur, Abu ʼl-Qāsim al-Anṣārī (d. 512/1118). Even if the Mafātīḥ al-asrār is a work that remained unfinished, it is a fine and rare specimen of the richness of Ismaili taʾwīl . 2 vols; volume 1.
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Qāmūs al-baḥrayn : Matn-i kalāmi-yi fārsi-yi taʾlīf bih sāl-i 814 qamarī /
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Muḥammad Abu ʼl-Faḍl Muḥammad's (fl. ca. 800/1400) Persian Qāmūs al-baḥrayn was written in 814/1411. About the author's life and times nothing is known other than that his nickname 'Ḥamīd Muftī' points at a certain level of expertise in the legal profession. Being a theological summa, the Qāmūs al-baḥrayn stands in a long tradition. The author used numerous theological and philosophical sources, referring explicitly to such authorities as Avicenna (d. 428/1037), Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191), Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 606/1210), and Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274). The work contains so many obvious borrowings from Rāzī that the Qāmūs al-baḥrayn is factually an exposition of his thought. In the edition, a special effort was made to point this out in each case where a concrete reference could be given. There are few theological summae in Persian; readers of Persian will therefore be delighted to discover this comprehensive work and its mellifluous style of composition.
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Rasāʾil-i Fārsi-yi Jurjānī : Rasāʾil-i kalāmī, taʾlīf ḥudūd-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī /
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From the time that ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā (d. 203/818) was designated to be the successor of al-Maʾmūn b. Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 218/833) and then murdered shortly after that, various Shīʿa groups have been at odds with whoever opposed their claim to leadership in Islam. The author of the Persian dissertations contained in the present volume, the otherwise unknown Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn b. Sadīd al-Dīn Jurjānī (ca. 9th/15th cent.), clearly issues from this polemic tradition. Reading his work, it is clear that Jurjānī had a full command of all the theological registers to be played upon in a traditional sectarian debate. This is especially the case for the first treatise in this collection, in which he opposes such movements as the Ashʿarīs, the Ḥanbalīs, the Ismāʿīlīs, and the Sufis. The treatises that follow, too, are all about religious dogma ( ʿaqāʾid ), with some of them showing clear signs of thematic, not to say temporal, association.
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Tafsīr-i Shahristānī al-Musammā bi-Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār. Volume 2 /
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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahristānī (d. 548/1153) was a prominent historian of religions who was well-versed in Islamic theology and the sciences of the Qurʾān. He is mostly known for his Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal , a ground-breaking history of religions, his Kitāb muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa , a critical exposition of the philosophy of Avicenna (d. 428/1037)-later refuted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Tūsī (d. 672/1274) in his Maṣāriʿ al-muṣāriʿ -and the Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār , his partial Qurʾān commentary contained in the present two volumes. The Mafātīḥ al-asrār was written in the final years of Shahristānī's life and clearly bears the stamp of Ismailism, a branch of Shīʿism to which he had been introduced as a young man by his teacher in Qurʾānic studies in Nishapur, Abu ʼl-Qāsim al-Anṣārī (d. 512/1118). Even if the Mafātīḥ al-asrār is a work that remained unfinished, it is a fine and rare specimen of the richness of Ismaili taʾwīl . 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
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Rasāʾil-i Ḥazīn-i Lāhijī /
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Born into a wealthy intellectual family in Isfahan, Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, better known as Ḥazīn Lāhijī (d. 1180/1766), was a particularly gifted child. Greatly stimulated by his father, he received a varied education: from literature and the traditional Islamic sciences to mysticism, logic, philosophy and more. Until the siege of Isfahan by the Afghans in 1135/1722, Ḥazīn lived mostly in that city. He then fled the capital, leading a wandering existence in Persia, Arabia and Iraq. Ten years later and seeing no future for Persia, he left the country for good to settle in India, dying in Benares, aged 74. Ḥazīn is mostly famous as a poet and intellectual who left his imprint on India's Persian-speaking, ruling élites. His attractive prose-pieces on a wide variety of subjects, from Qurʾān interpretation and knowledge of the soul to pearl-diving and the lifting of weights, are much less known. The present volume aims to fill this gap.
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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." :
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Al-Yamīnī : Fī akhbār dawlat al-malik Yamīn al-Dawla Abi ʼl-Qāsim Maḥmūd b. Nāṣir al-Dawla Abī Manṣūr Sabuktakīn /
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uḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-ʿUtbī (d. 428/1037 or 431/1040) was a native of Rayy who, through family connections, had entered the administration of the Sāmānids in Nishapur, attaining the rank of postmaster there. After several intermediary engagements he entered the service of the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty Abū Manṣūr Sebüktigin (d. 387/997) and then, of his son Maḥmūd of Ghazna (d. 421/1030). From the time that al-ʿUtbī was sent as an envoy to Gharchistān in around 390/1000, there is a gap in his career until he offered his famous history of the Ghaznavids presented here to Maḥmūd-also called Yamīn al-Dawla-in around 410-11/1020. Since he was rewarded with a postmastership in the relatively insignificant town of Ganj Rustāq-which he soon lost to intrigue-he must have written this Arabic work mainly as a means to securing a job. Early dynastic history, ornate style, invaluable source of information on the early Ghaznavids.
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