Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi madrasa-yi Imām Ṣādiq-i ('alayhi al-salām) Chālūs /
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Many studies on the Islamic world refer to writings that were originally published in manuscript. Even if a lot of these texts are now available in print, countless others are not, while printed works are often superseded by later, more critical editions. This means that the importance of Islamic manuscripts remains undiminished. In the West, major collections were established before 1900 and it is exceptional for new collections to be founded. In Iran, a country whose libraries host over 345.000 manuscripts, the establishment of new collections, often by testamentary disposition, is not uncommon. The Imām Ṣādiq Madrasa of Chalus near the Caspian Sea was founded in 1948. Its library contained just printed books. From 1979 onward, its third director, Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Mūsawī, introduced a programme for the active collection of manuscripts from among the inhabitants of Chalus and the surrounding region. By 2002, some 700 manuscripts had been obtained, all described in this catalogue.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402775
9789646781610
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. :
9789004404939
9789648700305
Az nuskhahā-yi Istānbūl : Dastnivīshā-ī dar falsafah, kalām, ʿirfān /
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For those working with Islamic manuscripts the libraries of Istanbul have always been a treasure-trove. New discoveries are frequently reported and of many texts, the oldest or only copy is kept in some library in Istanbul. Since the publication of the defters of the Istanbul libraries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many more catalogues and handlists have been produced in an effort to render the immense amount of material more accessible. Even if the bulk of this work is done by Turkish specialists, foreign scholars, too, do their part. The present collection of research notes is a case in point. They describe a number of important Arabic and Persian manuscripts in philosophy, theology and mysticism selected for publication by the Written Heritage Research Centre in Tehran. Some of these manuscripts are in the hand of, or contain marginalia by, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), Najm al-Dīn Kātibī (d. 675/1276), and others.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406018
9786002030399
Rubāʿiyyāt-i Ḥakīm Khayyām /
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The rubāʿī or quatrain is a short Persian poem in a special metre with a rhyme suitable to its form. Its use is not bound to any specific field, there being philosophical, satirical, romantic, lyrical and other types of quatrain. In the past, it was believed that the rubāʿī was a special form of the hazaj metre of Arabic poetry. Meanwhile, it has been established that it is in fact Iranian, its origin being the pre-Islamic tarānah or song for feasting and wine. In the West the quatrain was rendered immortal through the work of ʿUmar al-Khayyām (d. ca. 517/1123). A native of Nishapur, he was a respected mathematician and astronomer, as well as a recognized expert in poetry. Many of the quatrains ascribed to him are, however, spurious. This volume contains a reprint of Yār Aḥmad Rashīdī's selection (dated 867/1460), first published in 1953, followed by two other works in Persian, also by Khayyām.
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Includes facsimile text originally published in Istanbul, 1953. :
1 online resource. :
9789004404885
9789648700374
Dastūr al-kātib fī taʿyīn al-marātib. Volume 2 /
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From the time that the art of writing was invented, people have been sending letters. This is true of the Sumerians who wrote on clay tablets 5.000 years ago, as it is true today in the information age. But not every letter is the same: a letter to a lover, a friend, or a business relation, each requires a different tone. In the case of official correspondence, the need for a standard is even more pressing than in industry or trade. In the medieval Islamic world with its highly developed bureaucracies, there evolved a special type of textbook in the form of manuals for secretaries. These would include general information on the secreterial trade as well as collections of sample letters. This Persian manual by Shams Munshī was completed in 767/1366 and dedicated to Sultan Uways Jalāyirī of Tabriz (d. 776/1374). Wide in scope and well organized, it was superior to anything written before it. 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004407350
9786002031280
Dīwān-i Ishrāq /
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In early Islamic philosophy, poetry was regarded as a means to transmit the eternal truths of philosophy to the masses and to move them to virtuous conduct by the use of poetical syllogisms. We find this theory for the first time in the works of Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 339/950). In another application, poetry was used as a didactic tool in the philosophical curriculum, like Avicenna's (d. 428/1037) Urjūza fi ʼl-manṭiq or, much later, Mullā Hādī Sabzavārī's (d. 1289/1873) Manẓūma on logic and philosophy. Finally, there are the many poems which, while philosophical in spirit, were not written to be learned by heart by others but rather from personal motives. Here we can mention some of the Persian poetry ascribed to Avicenna or the philosophical poetry of Nāṣir Khusraw (d. 481/1088). The poems in this collection by Mīr Dāmād (d. 1040/1631), a prominent member of the Isfahan School in philosophy, belong to this latter category.
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Poems :
1 online resource. :
9789004404762
9789648700190
Dastūr al-kātib fī taʿyīn al-marātib. Volume 1 /
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From the time that the art of writing was invented, people have been sending letters. This is true of the Sumerians who wrote on clay tablets 5.000 years ago, as it is true today in the information age. But not every letter is the same: a letter to a lover, a friend, or a business relation, each requires a different tone. In the case of official correspondence, the need for a standard is even more pressing than in industry or trade. In the medieval Islamic world with its highly developed bureaucracies, there evolved a special type of textbook in the form of manuals for secretaries. These would include general information on the secreterial trade as well as collections of sample letters. This Persian manual by Shams Munshī was completed in 767/1366 and dedicated to Sultan Uways Jalāyirī of Tabriz (d. 776/1374). Wide in scope and well organized, it was superior to anything written before it. 2 vols; volume 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004407329
9786002031273
Tārīkh-i salāṭīn-i Kart /
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Ḥāfiẓ Abrū (d. 833/1430) was a Timurid historian who spent the greater part of his active life in Herat. An accomplished chess-player, he was a regular guest at the court of the chess-loving Tīmūr Lang (d. 807/1405). His works were all commissioned by Tīmūr's son Shāhrūkh (d. 850/1447), whom he had joined at his court in Herat after his accession to the throne in 807/1405. Ḥāfiẓ Abrū is especially known for his Jaghrāfiyā , a fascinating combination of geographical and historical information on the Islamic lands in two volumes. The work published here is part of his so-called Majmūʿa-yi Ḥāfiẓ Abrū , a universal history compiled from various sources. It is the account of the history of the Kart dynasty of Herat (643-783/1245-1381) based on, among others, Sayf b. Muḥammad Hirawī's (alive in 721/1321) Tārīkhnāma-yi Hirāt and Khaṭīb Fūshanjī's (alive in 702/1302) Kart-nāma , now lost. An important and rare source on the house of Kart of Herat.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405622
9789648700961
Taḥsīn wa taqbīḥ-i Thaʿālibī /
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Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038) was a very productive writer in Arabic philology and belles lettres and a promotor of the Arabic language in the eastern lands of the Islamic word. Born in Nishapur, it was there that he began his career, forging bonds of friendship with influential literati and various men of state. From there he travelled to the courts of different rulers in some of the major cities in Transoxania and Khurāsān, finally to return to Nishapur where he spent the last years of his life. A compiler and literary critic more than an author in his own right, al-Thaʿālibī's literary anthologies have done much for the preservation of early Arabic literature-mostly poetry-otherwise lost. As explained by the editor, the present work is not a Persian rendering of his Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan , but probably done from an Arabic original that was similar to two of Thaʿālibī's other compilatory works.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404786
9789648700220
Fihrist-i nushkhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Arshīw-i Milli-yi Pākistān Islāmābād : Ganjīna-yi Muftī Faḍl ʿAẓīm Bhīrawī /
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The National Archives of Pakistan were founded in 1951. The manuscript section of the Archives is divided into two parts: manuscripts purchased and manuscripts donated. Of the purchased manuscripts a catalogue describing 107 Persian, Arabic, Pashtu, Punjabi, and Urdu manuscripts was published in 1974. In 1998 a grandson of Muftī Faḍl ʿAẓīm Bhīravī-from an old family of muftis-donated his grandfather's collection of manuscripts, books and magazines. The collection contains around 2.000 manuscripts, some 1.500 of which are in Persian. Among these, several contain works composed by members of the Bhīravī family themselves, or copied or annotated by them. The present catalogue of the Persian manuscripts in this collection, compiled by the well-known Pakistani specialist of Islamic manuscripts, ʿĀrif Nawshāhī, is the first comprehensive catalogue to be published and supersedes an earlier and partial description of them by Masʿūd Aḥmad Khān, published in Nawādir magazine in Lahore, between 2002 and 2005.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405899
9786002030214
Risāla-yi jild sāzī : Ṭayyāri-yi jild /
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Before the printing press made its appearance in the Islamic world, books were reproduced in manuscript, as was the case in Europe before Gutenberg (d. 1468) introduced printing in movable type. In that connection, the art of bookbinding was very important. This may be inferred from a special chapter devoted to this subject in Ibn Bādīs' (d. 453/1061) ʿ Umdat al-kuttāb wa-ʿuddat dhawi ʼl-albāb , or from Ibn Abī Ḥamīda's (9th/15th century) didactic poem for bookbinders, called Tadbīr al-safīr fī ṣināʿat al-tasfīr . The present work is a new and improved edition of a didactic poem on bookbinding in Persian, composed in India by a certain Sayyid Yūsuf Ḥusayn, somewhere before 1228/1813. About the author not much is known other than that his knowledge of Persian shows some shortcomings and that he must have had mystical leanings. This new edition follows the discovery of another copy of this text in Iran, besides the one kept in Madras (Chennai)
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1 online resource. :
9789004405837
9786002030221
Sharḥ-i Thamra-yi Baṭlamyūs : Dar aḥkām-i nujūm /
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Claudius Ptolemy (d. ca 170 CE) was a Graeco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer who lived and worked in Alexandria. His Tetrabiblos ('Four Books', Lat. Quadripartitum ), in which he sets out the principles and practice of astrology, became a highly influential work that was also taught at the cream of European universities, well into Renaissance times. In the Islamic world, there existed an Arabic summary of this work, entitled Kitāb al-thamara ('Harvest', Lat. Liber Fructus ), erroneously ascribed to Ptolemy himself. 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. Author of more than 50 scholarly works, the present volume contains his Persian commentary on the Kitāb al-thamara in which he also made use of two earlier commentaries in Arabic, one by Aḥmad b. Yūsuf al-Miṣrī (4th/10th cent.) and the other by Abu ʼl-ʿAbbās al-Iṣfahānī (4th/10th cent.)
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1 online resource. :
9789004402638
9789646781221
Dīwān-i Fānī : Mawsūm bih Ganj Allāh /
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Born in Khūy (Azerbaidjan), Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Zunūzī Khūʾī (1172-1225/1758-1810) was a traditional Islamic scholar and man of letters who signed his poems as 'Fānī'. He received his basic education in Zunūz, Tabriz and Khūy, leaving for the holy cites of the Shīʿa in Iraq at the age of 23. There he attended the classes of, among others, Āqā Muḥammad Bāqir Bihbihānī (d. 1205/1790) and Mīrzā Muḥammad Mahdī Shahristānī (d. 1215-16/1800-01). He then returned to Khūy where he spent the rest of his life, save for a two-year 'sabbatical' in Mashhad. In Khūy Fānī was a protégé of the local ruler, Aḥmad Khān Dunbul (d. 1200/1785) and his son Ḥusayn Qulīkhān Dunbul (d. 1213/1799). He is the author of a number of works, among them the encyclopaedic Baḥr al-ʿulūm (Persian) and the spiritual Wasīlat al-najāh (Persian). The Persian poems published here are mostly mystical in tone, often inserting terms or concepts taken from astronomy.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405851
9786002030238
Rubāʿiyyāt-i Muʾmin Yazdī : bih hamrāh chand ghazal u qiṭʿa /
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Muʾmin Ḥusayn Yazdī (d. 1018/1609) was an Islamic scholar and a poet. Born in Yazd around 948/1541, his father was librarian to the governor of Yazd at the time, Shāh Niʿmatallāh Bāqī (d. 994/1586 or 996/1588). Ever since his childhood, Muʾmin was eager to learn. Thanks to his father he could go to Shiraz in search of higher education. There he followed the lectures of, among others, Mullā Bāghnawī (d. 995/1587), the famous academic and author of a whole series of glosses and super-commentaries on works in philosophy, theology, and logic. Muʾmin became a respected scholar and even resided in Mekka for a time, besides visiting the holy cities of Najaf, Karbala, and Mashhad. As a specialist of quatrains Muʾmin can be compared to authors like ʿUmar Khayyām (d. ca 517/1123) or Bābā Afḍal Kāshānī (d.667/1268-69). In the latter part of his life Muʾmin went through a mental crisis, choosing a life of isolation.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406513
9786002030979
Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (Fihrist-i 8000 nuskha-yi khaṭṭi-yi kitābkhānahā-yi shakhṣī va dawlatī). Volume 2 : ʿIrfān etc. /
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This catalogue of Persian manuscripts in Pakistan was compiled by the well-known specialist of Islamic manuscripts ʿĀrif Nawshāhī (1955). It can be seen as a sequel to Aḥmad Munzawī's (d. 2015) 14-volume Fihrist-i mushtarak-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (1983-1997), besides Nawshāhī's own catalogues of the Persian manuscripts in the National Archives of Pakistan and the Punjab University Library in Lahore. The catalogue published here contains information on around 8000 manuscripts in 335 collections in Pakistan, mostly in non-government and private libraries, madrasas, and monasteries. In view of the threat of decay of manuscripts in private collections due to poor storage conditions and a declining interest in the Persian language, this catalogue is both a witness and a wake-up call. In this work, Nawshāhī relies on his own research, on notes by others, until then forgotten in the archives of the Iran-Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies in Islamabad, and also on different kinds of published sources. 4 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408173
9786002031433
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. :
9789004404656
9789648700022
Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (Fihrist-i 8000 nuskha-yi khaṭṭi-yi kitābkhānahā-yi shakhṣī va dawlatī). Volume 3 : Adabiyyāt etc. /
:
This catalogue of Persian manuscripts in Pakistan was compiled by the well-known specialist of Islamic manuscripts ʿĀrif Nawshāhī (1955). It can be seen as a sequel to Aḥmad Munzawī's (d. 2015) 14-volume Fihrist-i mushtarak-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (1983-1997), besides Nawshāhī's own catalogues of the Persian manuscripts in the National Archives of Pakistan and the Punjab University Library in Lahore. The catalogue published here contains information on around 8000 manuscripts in 335 collections in Pakistan, mostly in non-government and private libraries, madrasas, and monasteries. In view of the threat of decay of manuscripts in private collections due to poor storage conditions and a declining interest in the Persian language, this catalogue is both a witness and a wake-up call. In this work, Nawshāhī relies on his own research, on notes by others, until then forgotten in the archives of the Iran-Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies in Islamabad, and also on different kinds of published sources. 4 vols; volume 3.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408210
9786002031440
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. :
9789004407305
9786002031303
Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (Fihrist-i 8000 nuskha-yi khaṭṭi-yi kitābkhānahā-yi shakhṣī va dawlatī). Volume 1 : ʿUlūm-i Qurʾānī etc. /
:
This catalogue of Persian manuscripts in Pakistan was compiled by the well-known specialist of Islamic manuscripts ʿĀrif Nawshāhī (1955). It can be seen as a sequel to Aḥmad Munzawī's (d. 2015) 14-volume Fihrist-i mushtarak-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (1983-1997), besides Nawshāhī's own catalogues of the Persian manuscripts in the National Archives of Pakistan and the Punjab University Library in Lahore. The catalogue published here contains information on around 8000 manuscripts in 335 collections in Pakistan, mostly in non-government and private libraries, madrasas, and monasteries. In view of the threat of decay of manuscripts in private collections due to poor storage conditions and a declining interest in the Persian language, this catalogue is both a witness and a wake-up call. In this work, Nawshāhī relies on his own research, on notes by others, until then forgotten in the archives of the Iran-Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies in Islamabad, and also on different kinds of published sources. 4 vols; volume 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408159
9786002031426
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. :
9789004406476
9786002030917